


Ancient Names

by proudspires



Series: To The Bone [1]
Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: A girl with minimal knowledge of Far Cry writes a fic, AU, Alternate Universe, Character Death, Enemies to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers to Enemies, Enemies to enemies??, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Horror, I don't know, I mean like.... Huge yall, I only know how to write feral girls now, Is it mutual pining?, John seed - Freeform, Like don't come in here expecting canon complicit, Mentions of forced drug use, Morally Ambiguous Protagonist, Mutual Pining, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Slow Burn, Some more graphic mentions of violence in later chapters, Some religious blasphemy (it's Far Cry), These two idiots don't know how to talk about their feelings, Unclear motives, Unreliable Narrator, Writing a dumpster fire fic 2: electric boogaloo, i guess this is horror now, mentions of child abuse in later chapters, mentions of sexual assault in later chapters, sorry guys lmfao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:35:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 170,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25290244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proudspires/pseuds/proudspires
Summary: “Tell me where it hurts, she’d say. Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where. But some people can’t tell where it hurts. They can’t calm down. They can’t ever stop howling." — Margaret Atwood, "The Blind Assassin"Once, before Eden’s Gate, before her hands moved with such surety to shove a fresh clip into an automatic, before she got familiar with the taste of blood in her mouth, before she'd gone off to the Academy, before coming back home to this shit show—she had thought John Duncan was attractive.Elliot spit water out of her mouth, gripping his wrist around her throat, and said with no absence of venom, “Go fuck yourself, John.”
Relationships: John Seed/Female Deputy, John Seed/Original Female Character(s)
Series: To The Bone [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2115237
Comments: 189
Kudos: 112





	1. of wolf and man

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! I'm back on my dumb shit.
> 
> I played Far Cry 5 one time many moons ago when it originally came out, and then never touched it again. And then, last week, I picked it up again, and then frantically started writing about the love of my life, John Seed, because my type is apparently Rich Boy Psychopath. So, here we are.
> 
> This is set VERY early in the game and is going to be hugely canon divergent, because while I do love a bittersweet/tragic ending, I'd like to write it a bit differently this time. This is very, very self-indulgent, so I wouldn't expect too many canon things to be maintained in the least. This first chapter has most of the information taken straight out of that scene in the game (if you know, you know), with minor edits to dialogue and then a changed ending. Chapter two is where things start to veer wildly.
> 
> The rating may change in later chapters, and for now is due to the inherent violence of the Seed family, and of course Elliot's mouth, of which her control is abysmal.
> 
> This would not have ever been posted without the support of the light of my life, [sithmarauder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sithmarauder/pseuds/sithmarauder), and the endless love of my dear [Starcrier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrier/pseuds/Starcrier). You can thank them for this atrocity! (But also thank you so much ily.)
> 
> Thank you in advance to everyone who shows great patience while I get my handle on writing John, and to everyone who reads and enjoys; I am oh-so-grateful, and I can't wait to jump into yet another fandom I have almost no experience with! So put on your Gucci sunglasses, baby, we're strapping in.
> 
> Catch me on my [tumblr](https://proudspires.tumblr.com/) reblogging memes and talking about dumbasses all day!

The first thing that she recognized was the desperate need to _breathe._

The second was that she was wet, exceptionally wet, her lungs filling with water over and over again, like dying a thousand times without the actual reprieve of death. Two strong hands gripped the front of her shirt, pinning her under the dark surface even as she struggled. Elliot thought, _I would rather just die._

She was yanked out as abruptly as she’d come to. Elliot gasped wildly for air, coughing up lungfuls of water, clinging to the arms of the cultist that had been kind enough to pull her out. She realized, too late, that he was probably also the one that had been holding her under. _Damn Peggies._

“... must atone! For only then may we stand--”

The man--a tall, bald, ugly looking son of a gun--pushed her back down onto her feet, facing her back toward the bank. The residual Bliss in her system was dragging her vision, making it pulse wildly on and off, irregularly timed with her own heartbeat, and through the blur she saw two others, pushed towards John Seed.

(John, in his fucking dumbass blue shirt and vest.)

“--in the light of God, and walk through His gate--”

He touched the forehead of the captive to her left.

(John, with his pretentious Eden’s Gate white leather book.)

“-unto Eden.”

Her own special Peggy pushed her forward as John touched the forehead of the captive to her right. She coughed up more water, spitting it out and feeling her stomach lurch as she stumbled forward.

(John, with that stupid fucking lilt to his voice, the lazy cadence of a man who didn’t even need to read the words in front of them because they were already ingrained in his mind.)

He stared at her oddly when she was there in front of him, like a fox in a henhouse; she shivered from the cold water even though the heat of the day had not fully dissipated. He said, slowly, “Not this one,” and suddenly the hands of the cultist were off of her, and he was taking the leather-bound book (she would not call it a Bible; she refused) from John, and he took a step toward her.

Elliot thought exhaustedly, _I could run, I could run right now,_ but the idea of moving her legs in this water, of stumbling her way through the woods _again_ , still coming off of a Bliss high, made her so, so tired.

And then, with that slick, venomous timbre in his voice, John said, “This one’s not _clean_.”

He grabbed two fistfuls of the front of her shirt and folded her body down hard into the water. There was no time for her to try and take a breath, or even hold her breath, and Elliot didn’t know what was worse; the very real idea that John Seed was going to drown her in this river in some kind of twisted, evil mockery of a baptism, or the shameful knowledge that her body had crumpled under the weight of his pressure, like a wadded-up newspaper.

 _Weak weak weak_ , the voice in her head chanted, while John’s hand moved to her throat and kept her under. _Weak weak weak_ , it said, as she grabbed onto his wrist and dug her nails in as hard as she could. _Weak weak weak_ , it sang when John forced his fingers into her mouth to open it up under the water. She wanted to close her mouth, bite down as hard as she could, but her body’s voluntary reflex was to stay open, gasping for air underwater, like a dying fish.

John yanked her back into the real world just when her vision began to blur black around the edges. Elliot held onto him, tightly, not for lack of animosity but because she did not think her legs would hold her to stand. Blood streaked down his arm where her nails had made purchase. He grabbed her chin and said, “Ah, enough of that sad little whimpering, deputy. You’re pulling right on my heartstrings.”

Elliot swallowed back river water. Wet strands of her hair stuck to her face and tried to creep into her mouth. He was watching her hungrily with those eyes--blue, cerulean blue, too blue to be in the skull of a man like John Seed--like he was waiting for her to say something. _Those eyes were wasted on you, John Seed,_ Elliot thought venomously.

Once, before Eden’s Gate, before her hands moved with such surety to shove a fresh clip into an automatic, before she got familiar with the taste of blood in her mouth, before she'd gone off to the Academy, before coming back home to this shit show--she had thought John Duncan was attractive. Handsome. Charming. A little rich for Hope County, maybe. But they'd locked eyes once before in the bar, and her face had gone so red she was sure he could see it from where he stood.

A man like John Duncan would never have looked twice at a girl like Elliot Honeysett, who had only kissed two boys her whole life and carried herself with almost no amount of sexy confidence. But then he _had_ , waltzing across the bar like he owned the place (maybe he did), planting himself next to her and saying, “Well, aren’t you just the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen coming through this bar?”

She had been so flustered then. Nobody had ever looked at her like they wanted anything from her, let alone that they wanted _her_ at all.

“I’m--I’m sorry, I’m leaving in just… Two weeks...” she’d said that night, tripping over her words and trying to say, in the most efficient way possible that she was flattered, and interested, but also that she wasn’t because she was going to be going off to the Academy and she wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of girl.

He’d laughed and leaned close, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. It had felt very suddenly like the noise around them dimmed so that all she could think about was the smell of his cologne and those eyes, and he said as soft as a kiss, “A lot can be accomplished in just two weeks, beautiful.”

And then her friend Joey had come and grabbed her arm, dragging her off of the stool and saying, “Sorry, but we’re meeting our friends later!” over her shoulder like it wasn’t a blatant lie. Oh, and she’d given Elliot quite the lashing, too, about how good girls in Hope County didn’t consort with rich out-of-towners, and how they were going to be leaving so soon anyway.

Another before. Maybe she still thought John Duncan was handsome; was that a different man than John Seed?

Elliot spit water out of her mouth, gripping his wrist around her throat, and said with no absence of venom, “Go fuck yourself, John.”

She bit the words out with as much animosity as she could muster. The act of it was almost as sweet as slapping him in his stupid face, the enraged expression overtaking his face as quickly and violently as a burning death of a star. His hand on her throat tightened, as though he was prepared to shove her under the water again.

He would kill her, she thought: but he would have a damn hard time doing it.

“Do you mock the Cleansing, John?”

It was a different voice, from behind him now. The rage left his face, replaced by something different. _Shame,_ Elliot thought absently, when he stepped aside and she saw Joseph standing on the bank. _He’s the kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar._

John began, “No, Joseph--”, but before he could get very far the man was shushing him. Joseph Seed was more dressed now than Elliot thought she had ever seen him in his whole life: not only pants this time, but shoes and a button-up, tied with a vest. His dark hair was slicked back into that loosely-tied bun that he often sported, and those stupid yellow aviators sat on his face.

_It’s nighttime, you stupid snake._

“You have to _love_ them, John,” Joseph said, in the way that he did; like he was counseling. Maybe in a way, he was. “You cannot let your personal feelings get in the way of that.”

Something in John’s expression tightened. Elliot thought that Joseph must have meant the venom he felt for her; there was no way that John could feel anything other than hatred for her.

Before she could think to say anything--maybe get one last lick in, and if the world wasn’t still wobbling around in her eyeballs she might have had the good sense to smash her face into John’s--Joseph ordered, “Bring her to me.”

When the bald cultist who had been dousing her before grabbed her arm, she felt John’s grip on her tighten. Just a little. It said, _I don’t want to_ , and just that tiny gesture before he dropped both of his hands from her made her stomach flip in uncomfortable anticipation.

Fireflies whizzed around her head. The short distance from the water to Joseph felt like a tunnel, the water and the woods and the mud bending around her with him at the center. He opened his arms for her, like a father waiting to embrace his daughter. When she found herself standing in front of him, he took her face in his hands.

He was gazing at her the same way he had when she had first slapped cuffs around his wrists: like she was the only person in the whole world, right there, in front of him, and there was nothing that he wanted more than to just _look_ at her.

And that was how he did it, Elliot knew. That was how he got people to believe him, to follow him, to do these crazy nutjob murders and stealing and--and whatever else they had in store, now that they thought the end of the world was happening and they needed to be prepared for it. He looked at them like they were the only thing that mattered, and they felt special, and loved.

“Regardless of the things you have done,” Joseph murmured to her, his hands large and feverishly warm on her chilly, wet face, “you are not beyond salvation. You are not here by accident, or by chance, deputy. You have been given a _gift_.”

He paused, the weight between them heavy. Elliot thought, _I wish I could kick your stupid glasses in._

As though he had come to fully process what he wanted to say, Joseph finished, “But whether you decide to use it or cast it aside remains to be seen.”

His hands dropped from her face. She almost wanted to cry; she was so cold, down into the marrow of her bones, that even that sickening heat--surely warped by the remaining Bliss in her system, which caused Joseph’s face to shiver in front of her eyes--had been a comfort to her.

John walked up beside her, and Joseph put a hand on the back of his head. “This one shall reach atonement,” he said, “or the gates of Eden will be closed to you, John.”

It was an order. The implication in them remained long after he had spoken them; in John’s face, in the way he leaned into Joseph’s embrace. It was soft. Softer than she would have liked. It was hard to hate them, when they were soft.

“Yes, Joseph,” John replied obediently.

Elliot’s vision swam. She wondered how many Bliss bullets they’d hit her with; it only took one, she knew, but her whole body ached, and there was more than one dressed wound on her body.

Her stomach lurched. Joseph was walking away, back towards his car, and John was watching him. Elliot said, “John,” and the words fell out of her mouth like marbles. She remembered, vaguely, Jerome telling her that they poured Bliss oil into the water during their fake, mind-controlly Cleansings, too.

“What is it, deputy?” John asked, turning to her, his voice light and innocent. “Have a confession to make?”

“How much Bliss?” She spit onto the ground, towards his feet, again and again. The urge to throw up was almost overwhelming her. “How much did you give me, Seed?”

John made a disgusted noise. He put a firm, hard hand on her shoulder, forcing her face back up with the other, making her look at him. His eyes were too blue: more than they should have been, and as Elliot tried to pull her gaze away from his she almost toppled herself.

“Enough,” he replied, “to muzzle you, hellcat. We’ll see if you’re really worthy of atonement, won’t we?”

Her body felt weak. All of the adrenaline was fleeing from her body, and in its place remained only her blood, and the Bliss left in it, seeped in from the water through her open wounds. Elliot took a step forward, and her legs crumpled; she plummeted toward the ground, certain that she wasn’t going to be able to stop herself, but John caught her under the arms at just the right minute. He hauled her to her feet again, and she thought, _Just let me lay down, please, I’m so tired_.

“You should see how you look right now,” he hissed at her, their faces close. “Falling over yourself, soaking wet, barely put together. You’re--you’re so--”

He seemed to be trying to find the word he wanted to use; maybe the one that would hurt her the most. But for a heartbeat, his eyes just traced her face. Maybe he was angry that Joseph had decided _for_ him to keep her around, when he’d been so clearly set on drowning her.

“Pathetic,” he managed out after a moment, his voice tight.

The words rolled out of her mouth in a slur when she said, “Oh, fuck _off_ , John.”

It would have felt better, if Elliot weren’t drugged out of her mind, to see the expression of absolute indignant fury pass over John’s face. He clearly wanted his words to sting. He clearly wanted to hurt her, but John Seed had never met the likes of _her_ kind, not anywhere outside of Hope County.

“Put her in the car and take her back to the ranch,” he said, letting go of her and letting her stagger to keep her footing. “I’m tired of looking at her.”

One of the cultists grabbed her arm and dragged her to the back of one of the vans she had spent the last four days destroying. She struggled, futile as it was. There was no world where Elliot Honeysett wasn’t going to go down kicking, anyway.

“Where’s Joey?” she demanded hazily, pulling at the man’s grip on her arm. “Where is she, John?”

“Deputy Hudson?” John’s head had swiveled, his eyes narrowing in on her, like the click of a rifle scope. Her fingers itched at the thought. _I see you_ , she thought viciously. _Put a bullet right in the middle of your head, just like I did to all of your little friends._ “You won’t be seeing her for a long time. Well--”

And he paused, as though deliberating, and then said: “Maybe sooner, depending on how much you act up.”

_Dead._

The word rattled around in her head in warning, wiping her expression of all of her anger, and she saw it on John’s face--the smug satisfaction of a man who had gotten just what he wanted in the last minute: her hurt.

The Peggy pushed her into the back of the truck, slamming the doors in her face. Through the window, John peered at her, grinning as he waved.

“Bye now, Rookie.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Elliot did everything she could to keep her eyes open in the back of the van. She was the only one there, so there wasn’t anyone she could talk to; each time she pinched herself to stay awake, the gesture felt more dull, her body more numb to it as the Bliss from the Cleansing kicked into high gear in her body.

She had barely ever drank in her whole life, let alone participated in something remotely _like_ Bliss; so when it hit, she knew her best option was to lay down and sleep, feeling the handmade drug wreak havoc on her senses. Her hands had been zip-tied together, and she was still soaking wet and shivering, so when she laid down in the back of the van she curled her body up as much as she could to try and preserve what little body heat she had left. 

Though she had desperately wanted the deep, dreamless sleep that she was used to getting after drinking even one or two alcoholic drinks, she was plagued with blurry, troubling dreams. John Seed, in a bar, leaning into her like a flower to her sunlight; John Seed, calling her _beautiful_ ; John Seed, his hands wrapped around her throat. Leaning in to say, against the shell of her ear, _you’re pulling right on my heartstrings._

When she woke, she found herself swaddled in a bed. Her hands were freed, the bandages that she’d left wrapped over her palms and wrists from the helicopter crash wounds taken off. Her wet clothes had been stripped off; an old t-shirt, four sizes too big, and a pair of long grey sweats were on her instead, the top of the sweats rolled over and over to make them not swallow up her legs. The idea that someone in Eden’s Gate had undressed her made her stomach twist uncomfortably.

Despite the heavy blanket, warmer clothes, and the fireplace, Elliot felt a deep chill settle in her skeleton, and she shuddered. Her head pounded. She felt like her mouth was full of cotton. For a long a moment, she stared at the wall, her back to the room, and tried to figure out what she was going to do when she could get to her feet.

Kick John Seed’s stupid face in, for one. His smug, stupid face. _It really is a waste_ , she thought absently, _to give him any good genetics at all._

If he really did kill Joey, she would make him pay.

“Have a pleasant sleep?” John asked, his voice crawling out from somewhere deeper in the room. Elliot forced herself to roll over; she hadn’t slept it all off, it seemed, because doing so reminded her that her whole body felt like lead.

He leaned against the doorway, pleased as punch, and watched her with that infuriating little smile on his face.

“Hello, John,” she managed out, her tongue feeling one size too big for her mouth. He pushed himself off from the doorway and made his way over, pulling a chair up to the side of the bed. Elliot managed to get herself to sit up, shuddering again with another chill.

“Did you dream, Rook?” Her skin prickled when he used the nickname that only Hudson and the others used with her. It felt traitorous, to let him use it. “I’d be interested to know what you dreamed of.”

She pushed the hair out of her face. There was no way; John Seed could crawl his way into a frozen hell before they talked about the nuances of her drug-induced dreams. She said sweetly, instead, “Bold of you to come so close when my hands are untied.”

“You won’t hurt me,” he replied confidently. “For one, it’ll take at least another full day for you to get the Bliss out of that system. For someone as tiny as you, deputy, it sure did take a lot of dunking to get you placated.”

“I’d say the adrenaline was maybe outweighing the Bliss,” Elliot replied dryly, glancing around the room briefly. No windows. Typical cultist. “What’s the second thing?”

John leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “You just wouldn’t stop saying my name when you were sleeping,” he murmured, like they shared some great and terrible secret, “so I’d wager your feelings for me are a little more complicated than you’d like to say.”

Elliot could _feel_ the heat crawling up her neck and into her face. She felt betrayed by her own mind, her own body. Every time she was around John it felt like this: weak, grasping wildly for control, taking and giving hits wherever she could take it and never getting a full foothold.

“You do haunt the corners of my nightmares, yes,” she acquiesced sharply. “Funny, how drugging and kidnapping a person will do that.”

He laughed. He seemed almost pleased by it. His gaze drifted away from her for a moment, and it did that for a few long minutes between them, drifting and inevitably dragging back to her again, like he couldn’t resist looking at her. John pressed his thumb to his lower lip, tapping absently, before he took in a little breath, and he said, “I remember you, Rook.”

She felt her stomach twist, doing backflips, her heart pummeling the bones of her rib cage. That couldn’t be true; there was no way John would remember her, from all of those years ago, from a single interaction in a bar that lasted no longer than five or six minutes.

“You blushed just like this when I looked at you then, too,” John rumbled, his grin splitting wickedly across his face. “You were so sweet then.”

“I hate you,” Elliot said, gritting the words through her teeth, the way she knew how, baring them like a wild animal. The way her mama had taught her. "I hate you.”

“You keep saying that.” John’s gaze was dark, like the water he’d held her under. “But I don’t think you really mean it, Elliot Honeysett. If I remember correctly, you were very eager to spend time with me the first we met.”

Her lids felt heavy. She considered the logistics of lifting her hands and punching him. “I was different back then.”

“Weren’t we all?” John sighed. “Anyway, I’ll let you rest; I just heard you talking in your sleep and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The doc thinks you’ve got a mild case of pneumonia. Wouldn’t want you to strain yourself, so--”

He came to a stand, smiling at her with that maddening half-smile that curved his lips, boyish and charming and all together not cohesive with his Mega DoomSayer persona. John leaned down, and much like he had the first they met, he tucked a loose wisp of hair behind her ear.

“Sweet dreams.”

“Where’s Boomer?” she asked. _Please,_ she thought desperately, _please don’t say you killed him._

“The mutt?” he asked, sighing, and then continued off-handedly, “I don’t know, probably--out, somewhere, scavenging and waiting to get eaten by something bigger.”

She felt a little bit of relief, not that she thought John said that only for her benefit. If he had killed her dog, he might have used it to rub it in her face. He’d have no reason to lie about Boomer surviving.

He turned and headed back to the door, swinging the key around his finger. Tiredly, Elliot said again, “I’ll kill you.”

John’s head tilted as he paused at the doorway. He finally, _finally_ , turned his gaze to her, eyes narrowed. “Oh?”

“If you’ve hurt Joey.” She rubbed her eyes, her body aching dully where she’d been hit by the Bliss bullets yesterday afternoon. “I saw the broadcast. I know you had her at one point.”

John knew exactly what she was talking about: he’d put out that broadcast of how all they needed to do was say _yes_ , and they could all be atoned, too, playing across all of the TVs in Hope County, even in the homes where the families had been killed. It had featured Joey, duct-tape over her mouth and her mascara streaming down her face, a prop on display.

“I know,” John replied, watching her steadily. “It was for you.”

And he left, closing the door behind him, leaving her alone in the dark once again.

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

When he went to rouse her the next morning, she was already awake.

Elliot Honeysett was the kind of unassuming pretty that often went over-looked; but not by John. John had picked her out of the bar, all glowing warm and innocent, blonde hair, cornflower blue-eyes, and a pretty little cupid’s bow mouth that were, surely, a dime-a-dozen in a small towns all across the midwest. Hope County was not special, by any means, for its count.

But it was special for having her as she was _now_. The button nose, her soft eyelashes--they belied the little monster beneath. Everyone had a choice, John knew, when faced with immense pressure. They crumbled, or they changed: and Elliot Honeysett had changed, so much so that John hadn’t recognized her on the security cameras he’d had planted around Fall’s End, blood-soaked and dirty and jamming fresh shells into the shotgun she’d peeled off of the body of one of his men after she’d headbutted him so hard he cracked his head in the pavement.

 _Wild,_ John thought absently, watching her now, drowning in Jacob’s old clothes. _Feral_. _Not a good girl anymore, are you, Rook?_

“You look refreshed,” he commented. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and when he walked in, her eyes immediately went to him. “Hungry?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Elliot began. As he made his way over, he studied her.

“A dangerous pastime.”

“Maybe I was a bit hasty before,” she continued, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. John sat down in the same chair he’d sat in the night before, keeping an eye on her hands. “You know, saying I’d kill you if Joey was hurt.”

“It did seem extreme, but I wasn’t going to say.”

“I’ll kill your brother first.” Elliot leveled him with her gaze, her voice smooth still, “so that you can bury him yourself.”

The smile fled from John’s face. _Willful and spiteful_ , the voice in his mind intoned. His eyes narrowed. “And you won’t kill me?” he prompted, tartly.

“No,” Elliot replied, lightly, giving a little sigh. “I don’t think it’d be worth my time.”

The heat flared up inside of him, striking his irritation hot as an iron. He was suddenly reminded of her impudence; it hadn’t arrived, all of a sudden, last night. She’d had it from the moment she came back to Hope County. When he’d given her the chance to bring herself to him the first time to atone, she’d spat into the radio, _Come and drag my body there yourself, you lazy hack._

His jaw set. He could make her thankful; if she really wanted him to, if she really wanted to push him there. John stood, abruptly, grabbing the front of the oversized shirt and yanking her up; there was a little satisfaction when her hands weakly grabbed at his wrists; she looked rested, but she was still frail. “You ungrateful--”

“I wouldn’t if I were you, John.” Elliot’s eyes narrowed now. She tilted her chin defiantly, even when he could just throw her back against the wall. And then, as cloying as anything, she drawled, “Joseph would be _so_ disappointed in you.”

The sound of his brother’s name in the sweet, venomous timbre of her voice was like a shock to his system. _Stupid, willful, spiteful--_

She was right. Joseph would be disappointed, if he hurt her. Joseph had never fully agreed to his means, and while he firmly believed that the ends _did_ justify them, his brother did not.

“If your sweet Deputy Hudson wasn’t dead before,” John hissed, “you can bet she’s as good as now.”

Elliot’s gaze flickered over him. Even with the animosity in her voice, in her eyes, he felt her gaze linger on his mouth. Tiny, tiny little victory; under all of that wolf, she was still a girl, after all.

The blonde said, a little breathless, “You’re going to run out of things to threaten me with if you keep killing them off, John.”

“I can be creative.”

He released her, brushing his hands off as though to rid himself of any remains of her. He paced to one end of the room, and then pulled the key from his pocket and paced to the door instead. His skull was still buzzing with irritation; the pure _audacity_ , to talk to him like that.

“You might want to rethink your stance a little, Rook,” John said at the door. “You’re going to put people in danger.”

He slammed the door behind him, angrily locking it from the outside and clenching his teeth. _Stupid, willful, spiteful, ungrateful_. She shouldn’t have been so hard to break. They had a history, short as it was. He knew that she _at least_ felt that for him, before. It shouldn’t have been so hard to get under her skin.

But it was so, _so_ easy for her to get under his. Those sharp little eyes, taking in every detail they could, trying to find any weakness. She’d already put a little pin in Joseph.

 _You have to love them, John_ , Joseph had said.

“John?” Elliot called through the door, as though she knew he was lingering out there. “In case it wasn’t clear, I hate you.”

 _Yes_ , he thought absently. _We’ll see how long that lasts._


	2. blood and replay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am obsessive. I contain nothing but the replay. / I am blood and replay." — Lisa Marie Basile, "I Put The Coffin Out To Sea"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!! I'm sorry this chapter is so long!! I have nothing to say for myself except: I hope you enjoy it, because once I dragged through it I was quite pleased with it.
> 
> [Starcrier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrier/pseuds/Starcrier) is an angel who tolerates constant badgering and beta reads my work, so please everyone applaud her for her delightful charity!! And, of course, [sithmarauder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sithmarauder/pseuds/sithmarauder), who is my biggest cheerleader and my whole heart, and will always read my work even when she's never participated in the fandom before. They are both incredible writers themselves; please go read their work!! Thank you thank you thank you!
> 
> And thank you to everyone who has read, kudos'd, etc. Every one means the world to me!! ♡
> 
> I hope y'all enjoy. And for reference, the song in the bar is "Everyone Wants To Rule The World".
> 
> Some warnings for this chapter: some like, carnage. And swearing, as usual.

It was actually three more days, Elliot thought, before she felt like she had any kind of bearing that _wasn’t_ being conscious; not the _one_ day that John thought it would take for her to rinse the drug out of her body. But her waking and sleeping hours flowed irregularly, bleeding into each other fluidly until she couldn’t tell for sure, sometimes, if she was dreaming or not. Sometimes she heard voices out in the halls, and sometimes she thought they were in her room: but when she opened her eyes, it was only ever her, in the glimmering darkness, in someone’s old clothes. None of the conversations ever made any sense, which made her think she was sleeping for most of the time—they were always about people going missing, or the dogs being nervous, or not being able to find any deer to hunt.

The only thing that marked a real passage of time for her were the times that John dropped by, with his big fucking saunter and smug smile, always with the same infuriating question.

“Ready to talk, Rook?”

This was, what, the fourth?, or fifth time since his little temper tantrum that he’d asked her that. The first few times, maybe because the Bliss was still heavy in her system, she’d felt good enough to banter a little, just try and sneak under his skin. As much as John tried to act like he was cool and collected, all the time, Elliot held the strong opinion that of his siblings, he was the _least_ in control of himself—which meant he had something to prove. The occasional, _Oh, sure, Johnny, I could talk all day. Should we start before or after your family ruined my whole fucking life?_ or sometimes, _Hold on, let me grab my planner, I have to make sure I’m free_ , was usually enough to convince him to piss off for a little while longer.

Now, though, her body had purged the hallucinogen they’d pumped her body with. Now, she _felt_ the pneumonia John had mentioned. Each cough itching in her throat belied the real sickness that rattled around in her lungs like a sack of marbles. Now, her skin prickled with fever, and her whole body ached with more than just bullet wounds; the kind of ache that _settled_ , that made a home in you, that ate away at the marrow of your bones to nest.

“I’m ready for you to go fuck yourself,” Elliot managed out, once she could open her eyes. There he was, sitting in his little chair right next to her bed, like he didn’t think she’d lurch out of the covers and strangle him with her bare hands. He was right, of course: she was angry, not stupid. “But actually, John, can we skip our little song and dance today? I’m just not really feeling it.”

John, looking worlds more put-together than herself, with his dark hair slicked back and his button-up freshly pressed, quirked a brow upward. “Not feeling ‘it’, huh? Confessing the sins you’ve committed against the people of Hope County, or—”

“This,” Elliot interrupted dryly. She gestured between the two of them, struggling to get herself into a sitting position without puffing. “ _You._ You’re mostly the problem, if I’m being honest. Nobody likes to confess to a sore loser.”

The brunette’s expression tightened. Just a little, just enough for Elliot to forget about the way her body screamed until she settled back against her pillows. She did not _particularly_ like that John watched her, like the wild animal he was, each second that she suffered: and he only cemented that dislike once he said, “You look unwell, Elliot.”

She barked out a short, tired laugh. “Oh, that’s not very nice,” she sighed. “Here I was trying to doll myself up for you.”

John narrowed his eyes at her. He seemed to be considering something; perhaps the way she coughed and it sounded like her skeleton was rattling around in her body, or how strands of her hair were sticking to her fever-damp skin.

“I didn’t come here just to get you to confess,” John admitted after a moment. “I came here with a deal, actually. To give you something that you want, in exchange for something that I want.”

It was _her_ turn to regard _him_ this time, with the things that she usually felt when she looked at one of the Seeds: suspicion, and disdain. There was something sitting in her gut that told her making a deal with John was not unlike making a deal with the Devil, and perhaps proportionately, it was much, much worse.

She said, keeping her voice tight and manicured, “You can’t give me what I want.”

“For some reason,” John continued on, as though she hadn’t said anything at all, “Joseph thinks enough of you that he has encouraged me to seek other avenues of—”

He paused; and then, with great care: “—guidance.”

Elliot stared at him. She said, tartly, “Is that what the kids are calling torture these days?”

“I thought you might like going outside.”

The blonde stopped, pressing her lips together into a thin line. The word _outside_ filled her with a strange kind of thirst; to breathe in air that wasn’t pumped through an AC unit, to feel the sun on her skin, to touch grass. Elliot had spent so many of her days outside that being holed up in the same room, only leaving on occasion to get escorted to the bathroom, that she thought she’d never felt more hungry for something in her whole life than she did in that moment.

“For what?” she asked. She felt more than she saw the little smile on John’s face.

“Why, don’t you miss the sun, deputy?” he drawled, in that little almost-Southern accent. “I would have expected you to be jumping at the chance to get a little fresh air.”

“Not what for,” Elliot snipped. “For _what_? What do you want in return?”

John smiled. It was not a _real_ smile; it only thinly veiled the strange serpent writhing beneath. She wondered if he’d really actually ask her for something, or if this was part of his tactic. Give her little rewards, until she was endeared to him, until she was willing to talk about something. Or worse: until she was willing to listen.

“Nothing,” he replied after a moment. “I only ask that you behave yourself. That means—”

“No killing, no goading, no mocking,” Elliot intoned. “Right?”

“No _nothing_ , deputy. You go outside, you enjoy it, you come back in. No incidents means we can move on to the next step, which is more time outside, more freedoms...”

So he _was_ sweetening her up. He was giving her little pieces of things to make her happy, garner a friendly ground. That was fine; he could do that, and she could hold on to her anger and her hurt as long as she needed to. She was good at that: and she _did_ miss the sun. The only reason why any of this fucked up shit-show had been at all bearable was because she’d been outside; gunpowder and smoke didn’t sit in your lungs as long if you were sprinting across the Montana countryside.

“Do I have to wear these clothes?” she asked, after a moment, and she _hated_ how small and tired she sounded; the mere idea of being able to go outside had softened her, if only a little. Just what he wanted, Elliot supposed.

“I did bring your clothes back, about a day or so ago,” John said casually. “You can change first, if you’d like.”

When he said that, it occurred to her that she had spent an exceptionally small amount of time actually looking at the room she’d been existing in. Between fever-dreams and the haunting reality of her situation, there hadn’t felt like much of a purpose to doing so. But she did see her clothes sitting there on the dresser, neatly folded, next to two pills which looked like Tylenol and a glass of water.

She stared at the pills. She desperately, _desperately_ wanted her fever to break. But she didn’t know if she could trust that this was Tylenol, and not something else, something used to alter her mind, to make her weak and susceptible to blue eyes and finely-pressed shirts.

Elliot pulled her legs up to her chest and then kicked them out from under the covers. Her body screamed, but she ignored it in favor of standing, shakily, to her feet; John’s hand shot out, as though to stabilize her, but she yanked her arm out of his reach just in time.

“Let’s not get too familiar,” she warned, narrowing her eyes. “I’d rather you let me hit the ground and eat shit.”

He scoffed. She could _hear_ the sour in the sound. “What Joseph sees in you, I’ve no idea.”

She grabbed her clothes off of the dresser, watching John make his way back to the door. Without explaining where he was going or what he was doing, he unlocked it and stepped outside; the gentle _click_ of the lock from the other side made her stomach knot in a brief and momentary panic. She almost _regretted_ mouthing off. Maybe he wouldn’t take her outside. Maybe he’d leave her to sit in this tiny, stupid room, with these stupid clothes, and these stupid walls with no windows, and suddenly Elliot couldn’t stop that voice in her head that cared more about self-preservation than her actual morals and was telling her she had made a big-fucking-mistake.

After she stood there for a moment, Elliot forced her limbs to move. She pulled the shirt off over her head, tugging the black tank top on instead, and then shimmed out of the sweats and into her dark jeans. Her clothes smelled washed and clean, not like river water at all, and not in the least bit like Bliss, either. She tucked her tank top into the top of her jeans and reached for her belt.

He’d brought back her deputy’s shirt, too. It was pressed, like _really_ pressed, with an iron, and he’d left the badge and the patches on it, too.

She stared at the metal badge and ran her fingers over it. It reminded her that Joey was still out there, somewhere: maybe, possibly, and she could even be _here_ , in the same place. Waiting for help. Waiting for _Elliot_.

Elliot re-tied her hair back in a ponytail, smoothing little strands where she could. She’d only seen her own reflection in a fever-like haze the few times she’d gone to the bathroom; while she still willfully ignored the pills and water sitting there, mocking her, just getting up with some kind of purpose already made her feel better.

The door clicked open. She could tell it was John by the way he walked in—the cadence of his footsteps had become a regular occurrence to her now, something that identified with her an unforgiving reality check that yanked her out of her illness-induced dreams. Without looking up, she said, “Alright, well, let’s get going.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw John shake his head a little as he replied, “Not quite, deputy.”

Elliot turned to look at him, her brows pulling together as she readied herself to muster up a _but you said_. She had been so preoccupied with the thought of being outside and the fact that he’d brought her clothes back washed, smelling like the detergent from the store her mother used to go to, that she hadn’t take the time to look at what he’d brought with him _this_ time: a pair of handcuffs sat in one hand, and in the other, an item that Elliot recognized as a dog leash.

She looked at him. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not putting it on your neck,” he offered, as if that were some consolation. He knew it wasn’t, by the way he was grinning at her. Every time he smiled, not the wicked kind of way he liked to do but almost sheepish, he looked like such a _boy_. She sucked her teeth, holding out her hands for the cuffs, and as he clipped them on he said, slyly, “I mean, not unless you’re into that kind of thing.”

“I’ll rip your fucking eyes out, John.”

He laughed, and chided, “Is that a confession?”, and then—true to his word—he clipped the leash onto the belt loop of her jeans, tugging experimentally. _Just fabric,_ Elliot reasoned absently, feeling the clink of the metal cuffs against her bones. She coughed into her elbow again. _Just fabric that could tear if it really needed to._

“We all know you’re somehow capable of dragging yourself out of whatever pit we throw you in,” John said, opening the door into the hallway, “so you can understand why we need to take the extra precautions.”

“Sure,” Elliot muttered, “I always keep my feral dogs on a flimsy rope leash too.”

John shot her a look. She thought, for a moment, it was something close to doubt; like maybe he was worried that the handcuffs and the tether weren’t enough. She mustered and a feigned expression of innocence.

“So are you taking me out, or what?”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

_This had better be worth it._

That was the thought rattling around in John Seed’s head as he walked out the front door of the ranch. It was a nice day out; still early in the morning meant the sun hadn’t reached its full summer-time heat. Armed guards lingered around different posts, just outside the doors and along the numerous steps down to the main drive.

John watched the way the sun softened Elliot’s face. All of the tension fled from her expression when it first hit her, and her eyelashes fluttered, like this was all she had been waiting for. None of the catcalls or whistles from the passing guards registered to her; it was as though in that moment, nothing else could have mattered to her.

And then she opened her mouth and said, “Even the outside doesn’t make _you_ look better, John,” and the spell was broken. He rolled his eyes, yanking on the leash clipped to her jeans to pull her after him.

“Awfully mouthy for someone who’s getting a reward. You know, only good behavior begets rewards, deputy.”

He walked with her down the second set of steps. A warm, lazy breeze drifted through the trees. For the first time since their reunion, there was a smile on Elliot’s face, soft. Softer than he had even seen.

“Is that what this is?” Elliot pressed. “A reward for… Not strangling you when I could have?”

“Sure,” John replied sarcastically, watching one of the men approaching with a concerned look on his face. He _did_ like having Elliot on a little tether, as much as she could have certainly wrestled her way out of it. This was as much a reward to garner even a little bit of good faith as it was a test to see how much leeway she would get before she acted out.

She was almost docile, like this, he thought: drinking in the sunlight, hair pulled back from her face, her eyes fluttering shut and then open again. A little halo of sunlight struck the back of her flaxen hair. She looked like she did in that bar, the first time they had ever met—relaxed. _Soft._

Elliot’s gaze flickered over to his. There was a wry, crooked smile on her face. She opened her mouth to say something, but when she spoke, John felt like he was hearing it underwater, and he realized all of the blood had gone roaring through his head.

“What?” he asked, when she looked at him strangely.

She replied, “I _said_ , take a picture, Seed, it’ll last you longer.”

“And give me half the trouble.”

The scout that had been power-walking his way over to John had finally closed the distance. As he approached, John tried to remind himself of the man’s name. _Earl, or Ellison, or..._ “Herald,” he began, his voice urgent, “I have—”

And then he paused, his gaze darting to Elliot. She smiled charmingly, _too_ charmingly, in the cloying way that said, _no, please, continue_. John took a few steps away from her, the slack leash going more taut; the scout lowered his voice and said, “I have news. Waylon hasn’t showed back up yet, and...”

His voice trailed out of John’s attention. He motioned for him to stop talking, and then turned to Elliot.

“Remember the one stipulation I gave you?” he asked her.

She gave him _the eyes_ , even if she didn’t know she was doing it. She said,“On mama’s grave, no Peggy-killing.”

“No _nothing_ ,” John insisted, and Elliot heaved quite a sigh. The sound of it caught in her chest, reminding him that she was still sick.

Elliot replied, seeming to try and muster as much obedience as possible, “No nothing,” and gave him her best impression of a girl happy to be in his presence. He didn’t feel convinced, but he let the slack out on her little leash enough to take a few steps away from her, with the scout relaxing just a little.

John could already feel himself checking out of the conversation; the last thing he needed to worry about was one of these chucklefucks wandering around in the forest, high off of Bliss.

“Waylon is still missing,” he started again, “and the men say it ain’t like him to go just wanderin’ off. He would have told someone—”

“ _Would_ he?” John asked, arching a brow, and putting on his _Herald_ voice, mimicking the cadence that Joseph used. “Tell me: did you really know Waylon’s heart?”

The scout paused. “I—”

“Think hard, now,” John cautioned, and the man did. He could practically _hear_ the gears churning in his head. John couldn’t have told anyone which one of them was Waylon and which one of them wasn’t, if they asked. But he _did_ know the kind of people that they had attracted, and they were the kind who almost always stank of Bliss. In the rural Montana wilderness, it wouldn’t be so strange to think that someone would get so high they’d get lost in the woods and die of exposure.

“I guess I don’t,” the man replied after a moment. He sounded troubled. John clapped him on his shoulder, and when he did, it rustled the man’s shirt; he saw the sin tattooed on his chest, peeking out beneath the fabric. _Gluttony_. Figured.

“Waylon will come back to us, when the powers that be decide to bring him,” John assured him, “and whether that is alive or dead will be up to them, as well.” He gave the man’s shoulder a comforting, perhaps too-tight squeeze. “Yes? Good boy, Easton.”

The scout watched him, his eyes uncertain and something else, something John couldn’t quite read. “It’s Jace, Herald.”

 _Not even an actual E name? God damn it._ “Of course,” he amended. “You look just like an Easton I used to know.”

He opened his mouth again; he could tell what the emotion was on the man’s face now. It was disappointment. He needed to assuage that. Joseph would have never forgotten his name. But as he readied himself to say something, something that would lighten that look on Jace’s expression, John felt a tug on the leash around his wrist and started. He turned around immediately, prepared to see Elliot sawing away at the leash with her teeth like a wild animal.

But she wasn’t. She was sitting on the ground, staring at him, sourly. Her lips were pressed into a little line.

“Are we going to stand around all day, Seed?” she asked him. “It’d be nice if I got to walk before my muscles atrophied.”

“That’s enough out of you, deputy.” _I’m already making one exception for you,_ he thought bitterly. Elliot rolled her eyes, a gesture that she was entirely comfortable drawing out as long as possible, the disdain so hard and sharp that he was sure it must have made her skull ache. And somehow, some way, _even still_ she looked—

 _Stupid_ , John thought, angrily, before his brain could finish that thought in a way he didn’t want it to.

The blonde leaned forward, against her knees, and fixed the scout with her eyes. It was like looking at a different person, all of a sudden; she was all soft lines, her hard edges padded with sunshine and fresh air. With all of the sweetness in the world, she said, “Jace, _you’d_ let me walk around, wouldn’t you?”

Jace’s face flushed red, and John wasn’t sure if it was because he knew who Elliot was and that she knew his name unsettled him, or if it was because she was a young girl batting her eyelashes at him. He sucked his teeth, yanking on the leash hard enough to almost topple her over.

The way she’d looked at Jace, with silky eyes—even if it was fake—made something angry prickle in John’s chest. Regardless of her reasons, he didn’t need her sowing doubt or unease with his men. He gestured Jace off, with one final reassuring look, and then looked back over his shoulder.

“Don’t speak to him,” he snapped. “In fact, pretend nobody else in this whole place exists, except for me.”

“Oh, brother,” she muttered, coming to a stand and dusting herself off, “to be the last person on earth with _you_.”

John looped his end of the leash around his fist and pulled again, hard, almost unseating her entirely and closing the tiny distance that reminded between them. He couldn’t stand the insolence, hardly when they were alone and certainly not at all when his guards were watching. His said, his voice low, “You should be _so lucky_ , Rook.”

All of her biting, sarcastic bravado was washed away, leaving only her venom to remain. “Pull that fucking leash again,” Elliot hissed, “and we’ll find out how sturdy these handcuffs actually are.”

John was already walking again. One loop around the house, and that was all she got, for her little outburst today; he’d already decided that. “I’ve been thinking about your sin,” he said, with casual vitriol, completely ignoring her threat, “and to be frank, it didn’t take me too much pondering. Yours must surely be the sin of wrath.”

He turned, so suddenly that she had nearly run into him; he dragged his finger along the slope of her collarbone, down to the tiny dip between them, and felt her heart thrumming wildly in her chest. He murmured, “I think it’ll fit nicely, right here, don’t you? Maybe just over your heart.”

Through the corner of his eyes, he saw her fists clench, tight, until they started to go ghost-white from the grip. Her cornflower-blue eyes had hardened, flinty. Her words came out very slow, very controlled, when she replied, “Drop the leash and we can test out your theory of wrath, John.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” John’s eyes narrowed, and then he turned back around, clicking his mouth like he might have to urge a pony. “Come along, deputy, wouldn’t want your muscles to atrophy.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

She’s in a bar. She’s in a bar, and she’s twenty-two, and Joey is off to go get a drink and she doesn’t think she likes the one she has very much.

She’s in a bar, and she’s twenty-two, and John Duncan locks eyes with her from across the room while music blares in her ears, and she can’t feel the breath coming in and out of her mouth anymore.

John Duncan locks eyes with her from across the room and then beelines for her, like there’s nothing he’s ever seen in the whole fucking world that he wants more than her, and when he sits down in front of her she feels like she’s been waiting the whole night for him and she is _filled up_ at the sight of him, like a balloon, her chest expanding and expanding to make room for him until her whole body aches.

“I love this song,” she says, when John Duncan twists a lock of her hair around his finger and leans in close to her.

“Dance with me,” he replies. When she hesitates, he leans in closer, his mouth on her ear, and says, “C’mon, beautiful.”

She’s in a bar, and she’s twenty-two, and Joey is off to go get a drink, and she thinks she never knew she wanted a man with dark hair and _blueblueblue_ eyes and a jaw that’s so sharp it makes him look a little cruel until John Duncan calls her beautiful, and suddenly she realizes that’s all she’s ever wanted.

“I can’t dance,” she says. Her chest is prickling, burning. _Burning_ , a thousand little stings, where John Duncan drags his fingers across the scooped neck of her dress. She looks down. The skin is angry and red, and burned into it are letters that she struggles to read, her vision blurring and in and out of accuracy.

She’s in a bar, and she’s twenty-two, and her hands are soaked red with blood and John Duncan’s hands are on her throat and the word _Wrath_ is inked into her skin, burning like a flame. She wants to cry, but the sound lodges in her throat when his hands tighten around her.

“Oh, deputy,” John sighs, his fingers hot on the skin of her neck. “All you have to do is _just say yes._ ”

He pushes her back, and she hits water—except it’s not water, it’s _blood_ , dark and red and hot and coppery and he shoves his fingers into her mouth so that she has to swallow it back, again and again, flooding her mouth until she thinks she’s going to be sick.

“Confess to me, Elliot,” John says, looming in her vision, “and all will be forgiven.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

When she woke, she couldn’t breathe.

Her lungs felt like they were working overtime. Each gasp for breath Elliot took rattled and shook in her chest so that she had to cough, expending what little oxygen she’d been able to grab. It went on like this for a minute at least, dizzying her, making her vision fuzz black around the edges, before she finally realized: _I’m having a panic attack._

Elliot bent over in bed, wrapping her arms tightly around herself and closing her eyes until her head ached from the effort. _I feel: my blanket. I smell: the fireplace. I hear: the air conditioner. I—_

She repeated those things, her fingernails digging into her sides, until she could look around the room, until she felt the breath return to her lungs. Slowly, but surely, she unfurled herself and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes hard enough to see stars.

John’s face was burned into her brain. She thought she could still feel the sting of his tattoo, his _brand_ , and his hands around her neck. The coppery taste of blood stuck to her mouth.

Dream John was worse than real John, she thought—at least real John tried not to look at her. At least he did her that courtesy. Dream John rustled up all of those strange, complicated feelings in her again; the ones that reminded her that at one point in time, she had thought about how nice it would be to be kissed by a man like John.

 _No, not like John,_ she thought fiercely, _just someone who looks like him._

“I hate you,” she whispered, to no one, to herself. “I hate you, I hate you, John Seed, John Duncan, I hate you.”

“Well, those aren’t the words of someone who wants to go outside.”

She startled. For a second, she thought she was still in her dream; the world felt so fuzzy to her, still, but when she looked to the door and saw the man himself standing there with his usual—the handcuffs, the leash—she was relieved to feel awake. She wasn’t sure she _looked_ awake, but that didn’t matter.

Elliot coughed into her elbow, pushing herself out of the bed. Her stomach churned. All of the wild adrenaline that had been coursing through her body was now beginning to crash, and she felt worse than she had _during_ the panic attack. “No, I’m—I want to,” she managed out, sliding her shoes on. She was just barely dressed; the old sweats they’d put her in, the over-sized shirt, tied up around her waist so that she didn’t drown in it so much.

John was watching her, his eyes narrowed. He was surely waiting for some kind of kick back, some smart remark; Elliot found herself struggling to look at him, the sensation of the dream still sticking to her ribs.

“Well, put the cuffs on,” she snapped, sticking her wrists out.

“Just going to slum it in the sweats, then?” he asked as he cuffed her hands in front of her.

“I haven’t had the chance to refresh my wardrobe recently.”

“Pity.”

He looped the leash around her wrist, clipping it and pulling it so that it remained tight. He stared at her again, for a minute, before she bit out, “ _What_ are you looking at, John?”

John’s jaw set at her tone. And then, very slyly and with a cloying sweetness he said, “You just look tired, deputy. Did you have troubling dreams again?”

 _Again._ She kept forgetting he’d heard her mumbling his name in her sleep. And she noticed that she didn’t say _bad dreams_ or _nightmares_ , like he _knew_ that she was dreaming about the one time that he had shown her sweetness.

Her whole body ached; her nerve endings felt like they were on fire, and each breath was sticky in her lungs. The Tylenol and glass of water remained untouched on her bedside. She thought of all of the things she wanted to say to him; that she hated him, that yes, she kept having _troubling_ dreams where a fucking psycho drugged her and kidnapped her and walked her around like a fucking dog on a leash so that she could get her allotted amount of sunlight, all while trying to convince her, for some reason, that she should cow to his brother’s dumb-fucking-doomsday cult.

She thought all of these things, and the idea of saying them out loud made her so tired; so she said, “I’m fine. Can we go?”

John seemed like he might have been _pleased_ by her neutrality. Maybe it felt refreshing, after so much anger. _Don’t worry,_ she thought, as they walked outside, _I’ll have plenty of it for you tomorrow. And the next day, and the next, until I can get the fuck out of here._

“I suppose,” John acquiesced, checking the tightness of the leash again. “But only because you asked so nicely.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

In hindsight, John realized later, he shouldn’t have gotten _too_ excited about the idea of toting Elliot around on a leash. The men on the ranch were just as hungry for interaction with someone who wasn’t them, the women were hungry for revenge, and barely any of them had any more impulse control than a basic animal. He had noticed the way they’d all trained their eyes on them when they’d stepped out: Elliot was notorious for killing their people without restraint, and now she was vulnerable.

The first day, they had been tense. The second day, mindful. As each day passed without incident, with Elliot _mostly_ minding herself while still willfully refusing to cooperate with the less-than-violent methods Joseph urged him to use ( _you can’t just break her like everyone else, John,_ Joseph had said to him), they got more comfortable with her presence. She became less the hellcat John called her and more a girl. A _little_ girl, they liked to say, when she walked past them, trailing after John.

As they took the first turn around the house, Elliot dragging along behind him—and oddly lacking any fire that morning—John nearly ran into one of his men. It was that nervous little scout from before. _J,_ John thought absently. _His name starts with J._

“Herald!” he exclaimed. “I am—I’m so sorry for runnin’ into you. I tried to track Waylon down and I ain’t been able to find him. I swear, I don’t think he’s been just—”

John was only half-listening to the man. He glanced around; there had to be someone else who could help him with this problem, someone that _wasn’t_ John.

“Listen,” John began, interrupting before he got ahead of himself, “let me redirect you to—”

From somewhere behind him, all the way past Elliot, he heard one of the guards say, “C’mere, baby girl,” making little clicks and whistles at her like they were trying to rope a bronco. He felt a little irritation spark in him. First he had one scout running off trying to find his dumbfuck friend, and now everyone thought they were going to play a little game of poke the tiger? John turned around and opened his mouth to say something as one of the guards reached and grabbed Elliot’s hip.

She had been listening, too, to the scout, or _trying_ to when the guard behind her continued, “Don’t be _shy_ , now,” and then put his other hand on her arm. John saw, before maybe anyone else, the strange, calculated shift in Elliot’s expression, a wrenching of tired gears in her mind, kicking them into full motion again: and all in the middle of John saying, “Do _not_.”

(John did not know if he was telling Elliot to control herself, or if he was suggesting the guard rethink his decision: it ended up not mattering, anyway.)

The man had tried, at least a little, to yank her back against his chest. But the blonde twisted out of his grip with the deft ease of a woman who had learned to run _fast_ , ducking under his arms, and throwing her cuffed hands around his head until the chain linking her hands together was pressed against his throat; the guard’s automatic slung useless around his shoulders as he grappled at his neck, the pressure of Elliot’s cuffs on his throat bowing him backward.

It was more thrilling than John thought he would like it to be. Something about that little trigger going off, watching the man struggle to hold on to the shreds of his life; these things made John’s stomach twist in delighted anticipation, because she did it with so much ease—she accessed her wrath with so little delay.

“What was that?” Elliot cooed to the struggling man; nobody else may as well have existed, in that moment. The furrow of her brows and the press of her lips while the guard struggled against the metal noose were all that mattered. “Say it again, _baby_. I wanna hear it nice and clear this time. Don’t be _shy_.”

The other guards pulled their guns, but John lifted his hand to stop them. She couldn’t reach a gun like this, anyway. “Deputy,” he said as he wound the rope keeping them together around his wrist slowly, “let him go.”

Elliot’s eyes landed on him. Almost as though to spite him, she tightened the grip of the chain against the guard’s neck. His face was puffy and red, spittle on his lips, and his eyes fluttered as he fought for consciousness. She asked, with a strange and cloying sweetness, “Only good behavior begets a reward. Are you asking me for a _reward_ , John?”

His eyes narrowed. His chest filled with an emotion, dark and sticky. “The one thing I asked of you was to behave yourself—”

“Oh fuck _you_ ,” she spat, even as he closed the distance between them inch by inch. The guard’s hands slowed their movements, just a little. “Let your peggies put their fucking dirty hands on me—some fucking _reward_ this turned out to be. I’ll kill every single person that touches me, John Seed, and don’t you doubt it.”

“I don’t,” John replied, evenly. _Bad_ , he thought, _they’ll be so unsettled if I let her kill him_. _And pissed off._ “I know you will. I’m asking you not to.”

Elliot’s gaze flickered to the guard. She loosened the pressure on his throat just enough to let him gasp for air, enough to keep him conscious. “Then ask,” she said, her voice hard and cold as she stared at him again.

She looked wild, her hair falling out of her ponytail, her skin flushed, her teeth gritted as she flexed as much strength as she could. In this instance, her height was a benefit; the guard had to either bend back to where she stood, or choke himself out.

John stared back. “I did, Elliot.”

“No,” she corrected, her voice straining with some kind of high, hot emotion that she couldn’t keep out, “say _please_ , John. Ask politely for your stupid little grabby-hands cultist’s life.” And then, with that frigid gaze fixed on him: “Would _Joseph_ want you to?”

But the idea of acquiescing to just because she wanted to throw his brother’s strange fixation on her in his face had everything in his body and soul balking. He wanted to say, _go ahead, kill him_ , because it wasn’t like he cared if she did. Not about the man’s life, anyway. He only cared about the repercussions it would have.

John could think of only one thing that instilled fear in him more than his brother’s disappointment: his anger.

“I’m _waiting_ ,” Elliot bit out.

“Rook.” He had reached the end of the tether now. They were close, the dying man the only thing between them. His mouth twisted as he tried to say the words, every ounce of his gut fighting against it; him, John Seed, _saying please_ to the likes of a Junior Deputy; the thought was enough to make his stomach twist.

But she was right. Joseph would be angry if he let this man die for his mistake. Joseph would be disappointed to learn that nothing John had done had garnered any good faith in the deputy.

Joseph would be _furious_.

So he said, very low and through his gritted teeth, “ _Please_.”

The blonde watched him for a moment. He thought she might ask him to speak up, or say it in a full sentence, but he saw the exhaustion dragging at the edges of her expression. Even though Elliot had said _I’m fine_ that morning when he’d walked into her room, it was clear that something was taking its toll on her. The weight of her sins, perhaps.

It was probably only as long as a heartbeat, but it felt like something close to an eternity. He kept thinking, _Joseph is going to be so furious with me_ , over and over, the image of his brother’s cold expression settling deep in the pit of his stomach.

“Well,” Elliot acquiesced eventually, her voice flinty, “that’s all you had to say.”

She lifted the cuffs from around the man’s head, planting her foot on the small of his back and shoving him off and away from her; he stumbled, coughing and gasping for air, his throat indented by the chain of the handcuffs. Even when John grabbed the link himself, pulling her away, she turned to spit into the dirt in the guard’s direction. From the ground, the bedraggled man turned to glare at her, hissing out, “You fucking whore—”

“Sorry, _baby_ ,” she seethed, “I only play rough.”

John put as much distance between them and the guard as he could. “Enough,” he ground out. “What did I fucking say to you? Pretend like we’re the only people here.”

“He _grabbed me_.” There was accusation in her voice. It struck John, quite violently; it reminded him that she wasn’t all wrath, but a girl still, hand-cuffed and leashed and sick, and whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had been relying on him.

He pulled her away and down the slope of the hill from the house. He was trying to sort through his feelings while Elliot spit all of her venom at him; he could barely think past the _he fucking touched me, I’ll kill anyone who fucking touches me, John_ coming out of her mouth, like a mantra, like she couldn’t shake the feeling of the guard’s hands on her.

And John could not stop thinking about the way she’d looked at him, like they’d had a tentative agreement of good behavior ensuring safety, and he’d broken it when he failed to keep up his end of the bargain. They’d been somewhere, together, somewhere that wasn’t all hatred, just like Joseph had wanted.

“Elliot, _shut up_ ,” John said, turning to her. “I can’t _think_ around all of your—”

Elliot wasn’t looking at him. They had walked all the way out past the ranch’s shadow, storming down through the field and to the treeline.

“Look at me when I talk to you, deputy.”

“John." She still wouldn't look at him, her eyes glued to something past his shoulder. Her voice was hoarse when she said, “Look.”

He turned, following her gaze. “ _What_ could you possibly—”

It was Waylon. Or, rather, the person he assumed to be Waylon. He _was_ one of theirs, with his _envy_ tattoo exposed, his shirt gone and his body perched in the tree. He looked, upon a fleeting glance, like a young boy having a nice afternoon climbing a tree, a few feet past the treeline: but each second John’s eyes were on his body, he saw more details; the bright, yellow flowers stuffed in his empty eye sockets, a cluster of tiny white blooms spilling out of his mouth. Waylon’s entire torso was flayed open and emptied, cavernous and yawning, and bloomed with a vibrant bouquet of fresh-cut flowers.

As his stomach twisted with disgust, John started, “What—kind of _fucking animal_ —” 

“Not an animal,” Elliot managed out, her voice unsteady and hard. “Not the kind that doesn’t walk on two legs and talk like man, anyway.”


	3. by suffering alone we learn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Elliot learn the meaning of "better late than never".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, this chapter was a bit of a doozy to get through. It ended up much longer than I anticipated, but: I hope that's okay, and that you guys still enjoy it! We're finally *finally* getting somewhere with these two nutjobs.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the last few chapters; they made my day and definitely proved to give me inspiration to keep writing!! I've been staring at this chapter for a hot minute so, I don't have much to say other than: thank GOODNESS.
> 
> Enjoy!!

_By the pricking of my thumbs,_ Elliot thought.

She couldn’t stop staring at Waylon’s body. There was something, she thought absently, humanizing about the corpse; it was easy to kill the members of Eden’s Gate when they were shooting at _her_ , when they were taking her friends hostage, when they were threatening the very fabric of her life. But Waylon, sitting up in his little tree branch, a weird, dopey smile stretching his lips with baby’s breath tumbling out of his mouth...

He had been a boy. Just a boy, and now, he was—

Elliot didn’t know what he was, anymore, other than a decorative message, and he _was_ a message, even if John, pacing back and forth like a caged animal, didn’t want to think so. Her mother had taught her the language of flowers when she was young. Waylon was an elaborate, lovingly crafted message for John—or, more likely, Joseph, and the rest of Eden’s Gate: each flower picked with care, placed with intention, his body posed and manicured to look _happy_.

_Cornflower in his heart, be gentle with me. Baby’s breath, in his mouth—eternal love. What are the others? I can’t see._

“—handiwork?”

John’s voice was scathing, but Elliot couldn’t drag herself out of her thoughts to care about what he was saying. Waylon was a boy, and a message, and John was being very unhelpful.

A firm hand gripped her shoulder. She startled, as if out of a deep slumber, her body tensing automatically; the smell of John’s expensive cologne swam over her, and she turned to see him glaring at her.

“I _said_ , are you admiring your friends’ handiwork?” John bit out. Elliot blinked at him, not quite understanding his meaning, before it finally hit her in the pregnant silence that stretched between them.

Her gaze darted back to Waylon’s body, just for a moment. Yellow pansies dotted the yawn of his chest cavity. _Thinking of you_. Red carnations bloomed where his lungs should be. _My heart aches for you_.

Yellow marguerite, for eyes.

“Hey,” John said, grabbing her shoulder again. “Deputy.”

_I come soon._

Elliot said, with no fire in her voice, “Stop touching me.”

“Don’t look, Elliot,” John reiterated, and his voice was tight when he said it, pulled taut by some emotion that Elliot couldn’t work out. She shrugged his hand off of her shoulder. The warmth had been swept out of her, as if by a windstorm; the sickening, sweet floral scent of Waylon’s corpse wafted through her. John said, again, “We have to get back to the ranch.”

“You’re going to _leave_ him there?” she asked. Her voice came out accusatory, and there it was: he breathed the life back into that little ember again, the oxygen collapsing in her lungs to make room for the flame. “You can’t just leave the body—”

“You know, I’m curious as to where this pious attitude is coming from,” the brunette snapped at her. “It was your friends who did this, deputy. And you’d be happy to kill off as many of our family as you could get your hands on. It’s a little different, isn’t it, when you have to drag the corpse back?”

When John’s hand gripped her shoulder, harder now, she yanked it out of his grip. “Oh, shut _up_ ,” she spat. “My friends would never do this. Not like this, not to send some—stupid message. We only _ever_ wanted you to piss off.”

“That’s rich,” John drawled, “coming from the biggest fucking Peggy-killer this side of Hope County.”

It felt like a slap. It felt like he’d sucked the air right out of her lungs. The flame inside of them burned hotter than before until her chest ached, until all she was listening to was John’s voice rolling around in her head. _Fucking Peggy-killer._

“You’re not really kidding yourself, are you, deputy? You’ve got no high-ground to stand on, the way you’ve been acting.”

_Killer._

“Fuck you,” she managed out, her voice painfully tight, her fingers curled into fists so that her nails left crescent-moon indentations in the skin. _Killer, killer, killer._ “Fuck you, and your stupid dog leash, and your dumb fucking tattoos.”

“Ah, there she is.” John rolled his eyes. “I almost thought I’d lost you there. Come on, then, we’ve got to get back.”

But the moment he took a step away, the leash clipped around her wrist pulled taut, and Elliot sank her heels into the ground. She heard John heave a sigh, as though it were the heaviest thing he had ever had to do, breathing.

“Are you deaf _and_ insufferable?” he demanded, turning to look at her.

“Take his body down, John. The animals will get him before your idiots can organize and get out here.”

“My _idiots_ ,” John seethed, “are perfectly capable of getting a body out of a tree. We need to go back and figure out how we’re going to repay the favor.”

Elliot’s jaw set. She felt it; the pressure of her teeth grinding against each other, the word _killer_ rolling around in her head. She couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t forget that John had said that to her, had called her that, and looked pleased with himself after, like he knew it was so true and that she had been pushing that thought away from her this whole time—that she _had_ to, to make it easier to swallow the blood.

“I’m taking him down,” Elliot said, feeling like she was in a fever dream. “You can’t leave his body up there. You have to take him down. You have to—”

John yanked the leash, _hard_ , the same way he had when she’d made eyes at Jace. He pulled so hard that she stumbled forward, steadying herself on him, wishing that she hadn’t. He grabbed the chain linking her wrists together, fishing a little key ring out of his pocket and unlocking one of the cuffs.

“What are you doing?” she asked, dizzied by the frenzied way John moved. But before she could think to do something with her free hand—punch him, maybe, steal the key off of his neck, grab his throat— he slapped the cuff on his own wrist and held it up until her vision blurred.

“You’re fucking stuck with me, deputy,” he snapped. “No more choking out my people. No more temper tantrums about dead bodies. We go, now.”

And he moved, and suddenly Elliot was very aware of how much _more_ John was than her: in height, in weight, perhaps in ferocity, at least in this moment. As soon as he took a step that had her remotely out of his range, the metal chain linking them together was pulling her, dragging her along.

She tried to focus on planting one foot in front of the other, keeping up with the brunette’s frantic pace. He was clearly agitated; something about Waylon’s body, and the way it was posed—purposefully, with intent, _meant to be found_ —had rattled him. He didn’t _really_ think that Jerome and the others had done this, did he?

But of course he did. There was no world where John Seed did not immediately put the blame on the people who just wanted their homes back.

As they neared the ranch, Elliot heard the sound of nervous voices. She couldn’t make out the exact words, just yet, but she could hear the tones—stressed. Urgent. She could tell that John did, too, because he picked up his pace, turning the corner to the front of the house to see a group of the guards gathered around each other.

“You,” John barked. “Grab three others. Waylon’s—”

“Sir,” Jace began, “there’s—”

John’s eyes sparked indignantly at the interruption. “Were you under the impression I was done speaking?” he asked, and Jace looked thoroughly admonished, swallowing thickly. When he didn’t respond, John continued, “Waylon’s body is out just past the treeline, up in the tree. You can’t miss him. Get the body down before the wildlife does.”

The guards had gone silent. Elliot sensed their unease, rippling among them; their eyes lingered on Elliot and John’s wrists cuffed together, the leash long since dropped and forgotten far out in the field. They glanced at each other.

“I didn’t realize that we had all lost the ability of basic English comprehension,” John snarled. “ _Move_.”

The shift in the brunette’s tone seemed to be enough of a jump-start to get them going. They dispersed, murmuring among themselves, while Jace lingered in front of Elliot and John, uncertain.

“Permission to—?” Jace began, and John waved his hand, impatient.

“Out with it.”

“There’s an envoy on the move, Herald,” the young man blurted out. “We’re pretty sure it’s resistance. It ain’t one of ours, anyway. It’s on its way here, now. Couldn’t get close enough to see who all’s in it.”

Elliot’s heart pounded against her rib cage, tight and uneven. They were coming to get her. Jerome, probably—or Mary May, or Grace, or all of them. It would be overkill if it was all of them, but it would mean just as much no matter who or how many.

Her gaze flickered to John’s face. He had gone silent. She could see the strain of his jaw, clenched and taut under his dark beard; his eyes were narrowed and distant, like he was thinking of something else, somewhere else. And then he looked at _her_ , his eyes suddenly acutely trained on her, like a predator.

“Get a helicopter ready,” he said to Jace, “while I visit with our _guest_.”

Jace ducked his head and mumbled out a quick, _yes, Herald_ , before he darted away, quick and quiet as a mouse. Elliot met John’s gaze steadily, even when it felt like she wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer, even when she thought, _please stop looking at me with those eyes._

“They’ll want something,” Elliot said after a moment of silence stretched between them.

John’s voice was hard. “They don’t get you, deputy.”

“Don’t give them _me_ ,” she ventured. “Give them Joey.”

He barked out a short, sharp laugh. Elliot’s brows furrowed; the mockery in his voice was palpable, souring in her mouth. She insisted, “If I go and I tell them to take Joey instead, they _will_.”

“Oh, Rook,” John sighed, and he had the sort of wry, bitter grin on his face that made him look older, and meaner. “You didn’t _really_ think we’d keep you and Hudson in the same place, did you?”

Elliot stilled. Her mouth felt dry. This whole time she’d thought, _if I can just get to Joey, even if I can only get her out of here, if I can just do this one thing,_ and John let her believe it—he let her think that she was here, that there was a chance that he could hurt Joey or even let her go, if bargained for.

“Sweet thing.” John clicked his tongue, pulling his wrist up so that the movement jerked her out of her panic. His voice was low, brimming with venom, when he said, “There’s no way on God’s green earth that I was going to let you get even _close_ to sinking your teeth into Hudson. I passed her off to my sister weeks ago.”

“But—the commercial,” Elliot said. “How did you—”

“Held on to the recording, until I thought you needed a kick in the ass,” John replied casually, “which you did. Eventually.” His gaze flickered over her, almost disdainful—it had to have been—and rested on the cuff on her wrist. As if that alone made his point, he added, “All the good it did you, anyway.”

 _Fuck you_. The phrase rattled in her head, blending between _killer_ , melding and twisting until it was squirming through the bone arena of her skull like a snake; they were all loud, impossibly loud, the things she wanted to say to John and all of the things she wished she hadn’t said to him. All of the times she had been a little soft, or maybe the times she had been too sharp; letting him pick her apart, rattle her rib cage like a man entrapped. He made her feel—

_Weak._

“Stop it,” is what she said instead, when his gaze drifted away from her finally, as though the lifting of his eyes stopped her suffocation. “Stop the helicopter.”

He pinned her again, with those eyes. She set her jaw hard and fast, even when John said, “You’ve got some fucking nerve, deputy, to make a—”

“Yes, nerve,” Elliot interrupted, “the _most_ nerve, but you already knew that. You also know I wasn’t lying when I said they would listen to me. It doesn’t matter if it’s Jerome, or Grace—or a nobody who just wants to help. They _will_ listen to me, and if you don’t take me—well, we _both_ know that they would happily drive headfirst in a firefight just to get the chance to run you over, John.”

She saw his expression sharpen at his words. He stared at her, his eyes narrowing. She thought, _c’mon, Seed. You know things would be easier if the resistance wasn’t sending out raid parties trying to get me back all the time. You only have so many expendable peggies—and whether you believe it or not, someone else out there is interested in killing them._

“You think I’m stupid,” John said after a moment, incredulous. She only shook her head, taking a step closer to him; as if out of instinct, John gripped the link between her cuff and his own in his free hand and cocked a brow at her.

Elliot said, plainly, “That’s beside the point.”

That little spike of irritation flared in his eyes again, and before he could get himself ramped up again, she plunged on: “You think I don’t know how much work you’ve put into repairing those old helicopters? Fall’s End is better prepared than you think they are, and maybe the helicopter will get them on the way here, but not without significant damage—and it’s more likely they’ll blow it to fucking pieces.”

John looked to be considering her for a moment: and then he bent his head to her, close enough that their foreheads almost brushed, and rumbled, “And what have you done to earn this, Rook?”

Elliot didn’t flinch back from the poison in his voice. “I didn’t kill that man when you asked me not to.”

“Try again.”

“I haven’t tried to kill you one time,” she offered again, and it was true. She hadn’t made a single move to kill him. He pressed his lips together into a thin line.

“It’s the animal that measures itself by the lack of violence it partakes in,” he told her disdainfully. She shrugged her shoulders.

“You saw Waylon’s body, John. We’re all animals.” She tilted her head back, getting a better look at him, her eyes sweeping over his face. “In the end, anyway.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

John couldn’t stop looking at her.

It was one thing, he thought, to try and choke a man out with your handcuffs. It was yet another thing to then demand—from someone you professed to hate—to call off a helicopter designated to go and kill your friends. Friends who would have, surely, tried to kill all of _his_ men and women, were they given the chance.

And yet: here she sat, across from him in the back of the van, as it wound carefully down the driveway and onto the highway, in the direction of the oncoming envoy. Several of John’s people had already set up their little barricade closer to where the envoy was last seen heading toward. True to his word, John had called off the helicopter, and packed Elliot up into the back of the van. The link the kept them connected clinked, every now and then, when their ride rattled, bringing him back to reality.

He just wanted to put a little pin in her, to stop her squirming, stop her howling. Every time he thought he had planned three moves ahead—every time he felt that little swoon of triumph, when he felt like he had _finally_ gotten under her skin—she did something else entirely. There was not a single universe where John Seed had anticipated that the bane of his existence, the rapidly growing thorn in his side, would actively choose to stay his captive.

Which is why he didn’t believe her for one second.

“You look tense,” Elliot remarked casually, her words more of a wake-up-call than the rhythmic clatter of the tie that bound them together.

John sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Deputy,” he began, “if there were only words to describe the amount of pity I feel for you. However, there are not, and this vexes me by the day.”

“If you feel bad for me, just give me back to them.”

“Was that your plan?” he asked her, narrowing his eyes. “Get all the way out here and try to convince me I’m better off without you?”

She was silent for a moment; she looked almost thoughtful, like she was actually contemplating his words, like she really was going to mean the next thing she said. The words almost looked heavy in her expression, even before she spoke them.

“No,” she said after a moment. “That wasn’t my plan.”

“Ah.” John felt a wry smile tug at his lips. He knew that look on her face; it was a look he had seen many times in his life. _Resolution_. “The martyr.”

Elliot pushed some hair out of her face. “I’m not dead yet.”

The van came to a stop. He could see, through the windshield, the offending vehicle which had brought to them some of Elliot’s friends; a plain, grey, unmarked van. Free of helicopter fire, which he hoped was duly noted by his captive guest. Several others were parked behind it, too, but the windows were dark, and he couldn’t see into them. John pushed the back door of the van open, dropping the blue reflective shades of his sunglasses down from his head and onto his nose.

“Don’t fuck around,” he told her. “I’ll use you as a shield if I need to.”

“Boy, you sure know how to sweet talk a girl,” Elliot said dryly, climbing out of the back of the van with him. He shot her a look, setting his jaw as he walked around the back of the van and towards the makeshift barricade, thrown together by a few trucks and crates; several members of Eden’s Gate had readied themselves there, guns at the ready.

There was a woman standing there. She was tall—perhaps maybe even taller than John—and slender; she dressed in a modest blue dress, the hem of it low to her calves and the scoop of the neck only very slightly exposing the jut of her collarbone. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and the severity of it only managed to make her strong, angular jaw more pronounced. She couldn’t have been much older than twenty-seven.

“Which one is that?” John muttered to Elliot, who had balked for a second. She planted her feet into the pavement of the road, just by the passenger door of the van they were in moments ago. He couldn’t quite parse out her expression.

The woman, from the other end of the barricade, leaned comfortably against the front of her van, called out, “Mr. Seed?”, and there was a lush, lilting accent to her voice that he couldn’t quite pick out. Norwegian, maybe, he thought.

“Not mine,” Elliot said. John stopped.

“What do you mean?” he asked, lowering his voice and looking at her again. But each time he turned his gaze from the catlike woman who was watching him, he felt a prickle of unease creep up the nape of his neck.

“Mr. Seed,” the woman said, again, less a courteous question now and more, John realized with a pang of irritation, a command for his attention. “I think you can talk with your companion at any point in time; you two do seem—” She paused, and her eyes deliberately dragged along the handcuffs binding himself and Elliot together. “Attached. However, my time is not so easily won. If you don’t mind?”

And it worked. Beyond John’s comprehension, the way she said his name, his gaze snapped back to her, fixing on her. He tried to take a step forward, but Elliot stood firm, the link of their handcuff keeping him just a few feet away from the barricade.

“Is there something I can help you with?” John drawled, feeling the tension radiating in his shoulders.

“On the contrary,” the woman replied, the roundness of her accent softening her words. “I think there is something that I can help _you_ with.”

She pushed herself off of the front of the van. As she turned to speak to someone—a tall, red-haired man—Elliot pulled John back.

“She’s not one of _mine_ , John,” Elliot hissed, more clearly this time. Her gaze darted from his, scanning the treeline beside them with a sort of panicked precision that no longer allowed John any comfort.

“Then who the fuck is she?” he demanded.

“I don’t _know_ ,” Elliot said, like he was stupid, but she still wasn’t looking at him. It didn’t matter anymore, anyway—there was something more pressing demanding his attention, in the form of a fair stranger. 

“Mr. Seed,” the woman said again, turning back to face them, “please ask your friends to put their guns down.”

John looked at her now, studying her. A _new_ person, come into Hope County. To what end? And for what? Behind her, the red-head was getting something out of the back of the van. The knowledge of that filled him with an uneasy sense of dread.

“I don’t think so,” he replied tartly. “Why don’t you tell me who you are first, and then we can discuss the logistics of weapons being lowered?”

“You may call me Ase.” As she spoke, the red-head dragged a body out from the back of the van. The woman was not looking back there, but rather looked at John; a small smile played across her face. “You misunderstand. The guns are not for _my_ benefit.”

 _Fucking psycho,_ John thought.

“John,” Elliot whispered, “we need to leave.”

The red head pushed the body, once their feet found purchase on the ground, forward until they stumbled. John _felt_ the way the members of Eden’s Gate tensed around their guns, ready to fire; as he took in the soft, white dress, the loose curls of hair, he heard a familiar voice say, “Where is this?”

It was Faith.

John’s stomach twisted, flipping uncomfortably over and over again. Faith, struggling to stand, taking the hand of the woman beside her for help. Faith, her pupils blown wide and black, eating away at her irises, beads of sweat pearling at her temples and along her neck.

Faith, high out of her fucking mind.

“Come here, little love,” Ase said. She caressed Faith’s jaw, and pulled her into a soft embrace; one where the woman’s arms were draped around Faith from behind, her chin resting on his sister’s shoulder. “Do you see? I told you I would bring you to see your brother.”

Faith smiled, dreamy. “Hello, John.”

“Give her,” John bit out, fixed on the way Faith’s head lolled against the woman’s shoulder. “Give her to me, you bitch.”

“You see now,” Ase began, “that I have something that you treasure.”

John’s mouth felt dry; a strange, hot emotion swept through him, a wave, until his nerve endings felt like they were on fire.

“And she _is_ a treasure.” The blonde looked at Faith, taking her face in one hand and brushing some hair out of her face, lovingly, like a mother. “Mr. Seed, I know very little about Eden’s Gate. I won’t pretend to find you particularly interesting, or of greater importance than what you are. But what I do know is that you are right about one thing—”

And here she paused, turning her gaze from Faith to John and Elliot.

“The Collapse is here,” she said, as politely as though she were discussing the weather, “and it is my job—and the jobs of my family members—to ensure it comes to fruition.”

John swallowed thickly. “Give me Faith,” he said, again, because he didn’t care what she was here for; he only cared about getting Faith and getting the fuck out. Vaguely, he heard the distant roar of a helicopter.

“John,” the woman sighed, resting her cheek against the top of Faith’s head, “there are so _many_ things that I am sure you wish you could do right now, and you cannot. Like others, you are trapped by the earthly ties that bind you. If I _were_ to kill Faith…” Ase paused, almost pensive. “Well, it would be the greatest honor.”

Faith made a soft, amused sound, like the thought of dying humored her; but when she opened her mouth to say something, perhaps to Ase, perhaps to John, it hung slack and no words came out. 

“But what you can do is this: you can agree to give me everything that is in your possession—all of the food, all of the medical supplies, all of the guns,” Ase finished. “With the end of the world, if you think about it, what do you even need all of that for?” And then, as though allowing the greatest grace with an afterthought: “I will let you think on it for a moment.”

“Faith,” John tried again. He was desperate to get her to look at him, but she couldn’t seem to get her eyes focused, or to even get full syllables out of her mouth.

“One,” Ase said, pleasantly.

He felt Elliot grab his hand. “ _John_ ,” she hissed, with more urgency. “We _have_ to go—”

“Two.”

John might have been alarmed by Elliot’s panic—Elliot, who frequently was so very cool and composed, Elliot, who only went haywire when she needed to sink her teeth into something—but all he could see was the coil of the foreigner’s arms around his sister’s neck.

“I’m not leaving without Faith,” John snapped at Elliot, turning his frantic gaze to Ase. He didn’t feel fear; only energy, coursing through his body. “What’s to stop me from just taking her back from you?”

There was the sound of a bullet whizzing past them, shattering the glass of the van. When he looked, the woman who had been driving them before now lay slumped in the front seat, blood streaming down her face from the bullet wound in her forehead.

Ase said, as though her patience were thinning and he hadn’t said a single thing to her, “Three,” and as she spoke John saw more men crawl out—not just from the cars, but from the treeline, their dark clothes masking them from his surveying glances, their hands toting dark machinery that John’s brain only vaguely recognized, in the moment, as guns. They _poured_ out of the wilderness, and suddenly he became very, very aware that their meager barricade was going to do nothing.

Whatever it was that Elliot saw, before him, he couldn’t have said for sure: he kept thinking about how he had to get Faith back, and who was this woman, anyway, and what the _fuck_ was he going to tell Joseph?

And it didn’t matter, anyway, because Elliot moved with enough fast velocity to throw the car door of the van open and haul him behind it just as the new arrivals opened fire.

She said something—maybe _duck_ , or maybe a stream of expletives, or perhaps both—that John could only barely make out through the gunfire and the sound of glass shattering above them. Somehow, she managed to crawl across the console of the van, opening the driver’s door and shoving the body of the driver out of it.

“ _John_ ,” she shouted over the gunfire, “you’re going to have to pull your weight, quite literally—”

“Fuck you!” John shouted back, slamming the passenger door and ducking his head as bullets pummeled the front of the van, ringing in his ears. Elliot turned the keys in the ignition, the engine roaring to life, and as she closed her own door, she threw the van into reverse and slammed her foot on the gas.

The lurching movement of the van nearly threw John headfirst into the windshield. Elliot swerved wildly, nearly running them straight into the tree line, before she yanked the steering wheel around and pushed the van into drive. Another foot slam, another surge of the tires screaming against the dirt and the pavement, before she was sending them down the road in the opposite direction.

“Turn around!” John demanded. “Turn this fucking van around, deputy, right fucking—”

Elliot wasn’t listening to him. She looked, oddly, in her element, and then did exactly as he asked when she yanked the van sharply in a u-turn that tried, very hard, to slam John against the door. His head rang violently, color and pain splitting behind his eyes.

“I’ll need these,” Elliot said, reaching over and taking his glasses off of his face and putting them on. She did a little settle-in to her seat. “John, put your seatbelt on.”

John felt the overwhelming urge to throw himself out of the van as soon as it started moving. “Are you fucking _insane_?”

“If you fly out of this car, I do too,” she replied. “Put your fucking seatbelt on.”

They were facing the barricade, the dead bodies of the Eden’s Gate members that had barely stood a chance against the open fire. He saw more and more men pulling their way out of the woods. _All of them were just waiting_ , he thought, the dread coiling cold and heavy in the pit of his stomach. Ase was walking Faith to the back of her own van again, climbing in with her.

John barely had time to fumble with the seatbelt before Elliot was slamming her foot on the gas, making a beeline straight for the barricade, the men swarming the road, the line of vans.

“Elliot,” John began, the volume of his voice rising as they drew nearer and nearer, “what are you going to do?”

She didn’t answer him directly. She said, “Is your seatbelt on?” and then pushed the pedal so far that John heard it _thump_ against the floor of the van as they _barely_ skimmed through the space between the two Eden’s Gate trucks.

John braced himself for the first impact of bodies, gripping the handle of the passenger door until he felt his fingers go cold: but then it didn’t.

The men had scattered, to avoid the hurling hunk of metal, their bullets skipping off of the pavement where they could try to fire but otherwise too busy ducking out of the way to shoot at them. He let out a tiny breath of relief, opening one eye.

“Not yet,” Elliot muttered, and he didn’t think she was even talking to _him_ anymore—which stopped mattering very quickly when John saw the gray van also hurtling its way toward them from the other end of the highway.

“Oh, fuck,” John said. “Deputy, now’s the time to turn off—”

The blonde didn’t even acknowledge that he spoke to her. She didn’t look at him, she didn’t slow down, she didn’t turn off; she kept the van running as hard as it could, engine screaming as the little red needle fluttered at its maximum speed, racing down the highway headfirst to collide dead on with the gray van that held Faith inside of it.

He opened his mouth to say something—a slew of expletives, perhaps, or maybe even a prayer, if he was so feeling like it—when Elliot threw the steering wheel to the right just as soon as they were about to crash headfirst into the other van; this one, too, swerved at just the last moment.

She said, under her breath, “ _Chicken._ ”

But John did not have much time to inspect its whereabouts, because Elliot gunned it off the side of the road and down into the nearby field, the van rattling violently on its way off the road. There was a strange, brief moment of peaceful driving. Just a second where he caught his breath.

Then the strange, gravity-defying feeling of being on a roller coaster drop hit his stomach, and the ground fell out of view of the front windshield, and he realized—quite suddenly— that they were plummeting over a cliffside.

“Fuck fuck _fuck_!” he shouted. He was vaguely aware of Elliot’s arm flying out against his chest, to hold him back against the seat, as the van made its first tentative impact with the hillside: and then another weightless moment, followed by a harder, more violent impact, one that stuck.

Elliot removed her arm from John’s chest and yanked the emergency brake before slamming on the manual brakes, _hard._ He braced himself against the dashboard, watching the blur of green and brown and sky-blue through the front window as the van rattled through underbrush and then—blissfully—rolled to a stop.

For a little while, there was only the sound of their labored breathing and the ticking of the van’s engine while it desperately tried to cool off. As his senses slowly came back to him, John was aware of a few other things: the river, nearby, the wind rustling the trees, and the sound of hot tires squealing on pavement.

Elliot said, “John?” and the way that she said his name—strangely devoid of any venom, for once—felt like an ice water shock to his system. “John, we have to move.”

“Fuck _you_ ,” John managed out. His voice was hoarse, the adrenaline making his hands shake. Or maybe that was the way the van had rattled on its way down the hill. “You could have killed us! You could have fucking _killed Faith!”_

“She was in the same van as that psycho,” Elliot replied. She coughed into her elbow, her breaths labored still even after a few moments of rest. “They wouldn’t have let me run into her.”

John felt the incredulity well up inside of him, sharp and hot, flooding his senses all at once. “Don’t bargain with our fucking lives.”

“Oh, piss off.” Elliot wiped sweat from her forehead, and she _laughed_ , genuine and real, reaching over and giving his knee a pat. She was oddly in a good mood. “If I hadn’t been there, we’d both be dead, and nobody would be able to get Faith back.” She turned her head, looking at him finally— _finally_ —before taking a long, deep breath, the gesture making her eyelashes flutter with fatigue.

She was right. She was right, and John hated it, and he thought, _I’m going to fucking lose it._

“Well,” he began, his voice still holding a strange adrenaline tremble, “let’s get a move on then.”

The blonde straightened up in the driver’s seat. “Maybe, John,” she ventured, “you could undo these cuffs, and give us a bit more mobility, huh?”

He stared at her. He had honestly forgotten about it until she brought it back up. A plethora of scenarios rolled through his head; Elliot, strangling him with both of her hands, Elliot finding something sharp to effectively gut him with, Elliot kicking him off of a cliff.

“I’m better at fighting if I have both hands,” she added.

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“John, we can’t traipse through the Montana wilderness handcuffed together,” Elliot insisted, exasperated and raspy. “If they have Faith, they have Joey. We’re going the same direction.”

John searched her expression for a tell. Anything that would show she was lying: but if Elliot was one thing, it was—to him—readable in moments like this. Her expression was clear.

“Fine,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “but I _will_ push you off a cliff if I catch a whiff of homicidal tendencies from you.”

Relaxing when he agreed, Elliot leaned back against her seat again. Dryly, she asked, “Do you promise?”

He narrowed his eyes. When he found his right pocket empty, he thought, _oh, I must have put it in my left pocket._ When _that_ pocket was empty, too, he checked both back pockets. 

Nothing.

“John,” Elliot said, “where’s the key for the cuffs?”

“It _was_ in my pocket.” John passed a hand—his free hand—over his face. “God—fucking damn it.”

“You _lost_ the key?”

“Well, you were rearranging my fucking organs for ten minutes straight!” John snapped. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it flew out while you were playing demo derby out there!”

Elliot groaned, burying her face in her hands, the noise filled with desolation. “Of _course_. Of _course_ you would lose the key. We would have been better off if you put the fucking leash on me.”

“Dramatic,” John snipped. After a moment of silence stretched between them, he sighed. “Come on. We can’t stay here. They’ll probably be looking for us, and—”

“Yes,” Elliot sighed. She rubbed her eyes tiredly, taking in a rattly breath. “They probably will be. Just give me a moment to mourn.”

John settled back against the passenger seat and closed his eyes. He tried to push images of drugged-out Faith out of his head; they persisted, with Ase’s dark eyes fixed on him, goading him. _It is my job to ensure it comes to fruition._

Elliot pulled the keys out of the ignition, opening the driver’s side door. She said, “Let’s go,” and pulled; but John stayed put. She turned to look at him. “What is it?”

“You want _me_ to crawl over the console to get out?” he asked. “Elliot, I’m almost a foot taller than you.”

When she realized what it was that he was saying, she rolled her eyes so hard John thought she might actually pass out. “You fucking baby,” she muttered. “Open your door.”

He did as she said; before he could move to scoot out before her, she was clambering over him, desperate to get out into fresh air. The invasion of his space was abrupt and sudden, and for one tense second Elliot had a hand on either side of his head, her body radiating heat through her clothes, their faces inches apart— and then she hopped out of his lap.

“Couldn’t wait to get out?” he asked dryly, ignoring the way her sudden close proximity had sent his heart thundering again, for no particular reason at all. Elliot gave him a tired look.

“I guess I’m just thrilled that we’re on the same side for once.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here on [my tumblr](https://proudspires.tumblr.com/) blogging about these idiots and many others!


	4. game of survival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody:   
> John and Elliot, their handcuffed hands brushing: what are we?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I'm so, so sorry it took so long for me to get this chapter up. You know how quarantine-times just be like that where you manically write something for like 8 days straight and then never touch it again for weeks? Yeah, it really DO be like that sometimes.
> 
> Anyway, this chapter is a bit of a filler, for which I apologize; I wanted some softer John/Elliot moments, at least something that wasn't quite so much "fuck off" and "please go fuck yourself" constantly, but also, that is also kind of Elliot's personality, so. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> I promise I will try to be much better at making myself sit down and actually write now that I'm not swallowed up by a black hole of writer's block! Thank you to everyone for your patience and understanding and for all of the lovely comments and kudos; it really means the most to me! I just love getting the chance to interact with y'all.
> 
> You can always find me on tumblr under the username proudspires for more shenanigans, and I would love it if you came to say hi!

The adrenaline crash was already happening.

Elliot was familiar with the sensation; as she rifled through the glove box of the Eden’s Gate van, John waited impatiently just on the other side of her while the sound of car doors and voices echoed in the distance. He clearly wanted to tell her to hurry up, and maybe he  _ would _ , if she took long enough—but she wasn’t keen on these fucking crazies getting their hands on her.

She almost laughed at the thought. Passed from one psycho’s hands to another; wouldn’t that be something? Joey would be absolutely furious.

_ If she’s not dead, _ that unrelenting voice in her head echoed, stilling her hands for a moment.

“Deputy?” John asked, when she stopped moving, maybe because he was worried she could hear or see something he couldn’t. That would be nice—John Seed, sweating, for once in his fucking life.

_ If they didn’t already gut her and plant a whole fucking garden in her. _

“Rook.” His voice wasn’t a question now, but a command, and she could hear it in his voice;  _ look at me, tell me what you’re thinking _ , and her teeth clicked together. She closed the glove box shut, no reward to be found—just loose papers and some napkins—and closed the door beside her. The rattle of the chain link binding their cuffed wrists together reminded her, once again, of the absurdity of their situation.

“Don’t call me that,” she said tiredly, the rush of driving almost head-first into another car at a hundred miles-per-hour fleeing her body, leaving her feeling gutted and emptied out. She coughed into her elbow and the gesture pulled something in the cavity of her chest; now more than ever, she wished that she’d taken the risk of potentially dying and just popped those Tylenol-looking pills when she’d had the chance

John stared at her for a moment. He didn’t respond to her demand, but replied, “You’re still wearing my glasses.”

Elliot shrugged. She pushed the glasses down her nose a little to peer at him over the blue, reflective lenses. “They look better on me anyway.”

His lips pressed into a thin line. He looked like he wanted to say something to her—and she certainly expected him to snap at her to hand them over—but he turned away and started walking. He said, briskly, “Let’s not get hunted down like wild animals, shall we?”

“Yes,” Elliot agreed, falling into step with him, sobering her voice quite purposefully, “wouldn’t it be awful if one of those  _ crazy cultists _ say, drugged and kidnapped us? Absolutely beastly.”

John shot her a look. He looked awfully like he wanted to say something again; that frustrated tense of his jaw, the way his eyes narrowed, these were all familiar gestures to her. She could tell that she was pushing a button he didn’t want her to have access to. That knowledge gave her a giddy kind of thrill and kick-started her system all over again.  _ Good _ , Elliot thought, minding her business as picked along a barely-used trail and left the van behind them, going further and further into the wilderness. The river was close; if she had to guess, they were somewhere halfway between where John had taken resident and the border into Faith’s territory.  _ I hope that pisses him off. _

“We should head back to the ranch first,” Elliot continued, falling into step with John—and not without some puffing. “And would you slow down? Remember how you got me sick? And then handcuffed us together in a temper tantrum? And then—”

“I was there,” John snipped at her. Despite his brittle tone, he did make an effort of less power walking, maybe because he didn’t want to have to drag her unconscious body along once she passed out from billowing her way across the Montana wilderness.

“Just wanted to make sure. Humility is a virtue, as they say.”

“I have to get Faith back,” he said, ignoring her little jab. “I can’t let those fucking nutjobs keep her.”

Elliot clambered over a log, keeping half of her attention on the sound of voices, still distant enough that she wasn’t worried about it. “In case you’ve forgotten this other small detail,” she continued, “they probably also have Joey, which they  _ wouldn’t _ , if you had just kept your grimy hands off of her. So, you know—let’s keep in mind we have generally the same goal, here.”

“Thank you,” John muttered tersely, “for keeping us  _ goal-oriented _ .”

“You’re very welcome, John.” Elliot tugged the sweatpants back up her hips; now, in the dying light of golden hour, she was regretting not changing into her jeans earlier that morning. Of course there was no way she could have known, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty. 

She felt breathless from talking and walking, but the desire to really dig in was too great, overwhelming her need to take a full breath as she added, “It’s my pleasure, truly. Any time you need me, all you have to do is—”

As they wandered down closer to the river, John puffed out, “Do you ever stop talking?”

“I remember a time when all you wanted was for me to talk to you.”

Just as she finished her sentence, about to tack another jab on just for the hell of it— _ and another thing _ —she heard shouts, closer now, in a foreign language that she didn’t recognize. She stilled immediately, instinctively reaching and grabbing John’s arm to keep him from continuing on.

He opened his mouth to ask her what she was stopping for, but before he could she waved her hand frantically at him and voicelessly mouthed the words,  _ shut the fuck up.  _ Just one moment was all it would take; one second for them to be heard and they’d be gutted and flayed open, just like Waylon. Elliot did not have any desire to become a floral arrangement any time soon.

The voices echoed again, closer this time. John pushed her hand out of his face and instead pulled her further along the trail, moving with greater purpose this time; the second she started struggling to keep up, he wrapped a firm arm around her midsection and hoisted her, planting her right in front of him before he ducked them into some brush.

(She reckoned the heat in her cheeks was adrenaline, certainly, and not the way it had felt to have John’s chest pressed against her back, his arm warm and strong against her: because it certainly wasn’t that, but perhaps more like a pneumonia fever or just her body crumpling under the stress.)

Dark, heavy boots stormed through the underbrush, talking to each other now in a more conversational tone; though Elliot could hear them chattering and occasionally laughing at what the other said (in Swedish, or perhaps Dutch?) she could see their feet moving with distinct, sharp precision, stopping in time with each other and starting again whenever one of them said something.

_ Oh, fuck,  _ she thought with a sick, desperate, sinking feeling.  _ They’re so fucking organized. God, fuck. _

It was one thing to kill peggies, to storm her way into a compound and smash her head into the face of one or peel into the parking lot in her Jeep, Boomer having gutted two or three of them on their way in; Eden’s Gate members carried only chaotic, frenetic energy, barely held together by their worship of their leader and his siblings. Whatever structure they upheld was purely because they were told to, and it wasn’t a system they could execute on their own, without direction.

She had never fought something, or someone, organized. She had never bashed her face into someone who had thirty other comrades marching down to kill her, spear her on a stick and stuff her mouth with baby’s breath.

_ I’m only a girl.  _ It was a startling, violent moment of realization, that she had been bumbling her way through this, working purely on emotion and instinct. She was not a practiced, methodical killer, but one born out of necessity.  _ I’m only a girl, I can’t kill people who have their shit together. _

Elliot was vaguely aware of her breathing becoming labored, grinding in her lungs, and only became _consciously_ aware of it when John’s hand pressed to her mouth, his arm still wrapped around her stomach. His hands smelled—tasted—like leather and dirt, and it was  _ almost _ comforting enough to ground her, because for once John didn’t smell like that stupid fucking cologne that she hated, but she could still feel the dirt against her mouth like she was getting buried face down—

The steps slowed, stopping just in front of the brush. Elliot could see a silhouette cut across the forest floor, dappled by the branches of the thicket John had plunged them into, the branches pulling and tugging at her hair and shirt and skin. But she only barely saw it, because John’s back faced the trail they’d just been on, his arms around her. A shield.

“I think they’re gone,” John muttered after what felt like an entire fucking eternity and the voices had faded off, hunched in the brush and coiled around her like a snake, dropping his hand from her mouth. She tried to quiet the panicked roaring in her ears to listen (John didn’t know what to listen for; he didn’t know what it was like to have to hold your breath and hope your hunters passed you by) but she couldn’t; all she could think was  _ oh fuck, oh God, I can’t do this. They’re going to kill me without a blink. They’re going to kill Joey. They’re going to— _

“Rook,” John said, his voice firmer now. He must have been convinced their pursuers had moved on. “Rook, my hand.”

Her nails were digging into his wrist, revisiting shallow wounds she had made the night that John had held her under. But he didn’t wince or yank his hand away; he watched her intently, waiting for the iron-clad grip of her fingers to loosen. Elliot closed her eyes for a second, just a second, to ground herself.

_ I feel: John’s heartbeat, the dirt, the wind. I heard: John’s voice, leaves rustling, the river down below. I smell: dirt, leather, pine sap, humid river air. _

She kept waiting for John to push her again. She kept waiting for him to say something stupid— _ Earth to Elliot? _ —or demand she get moving, or something equally insufferable, but he stayed like that; chest against her back, eclipsing out the little bit of sun breaking through the brush, waiting.

“I’m fine,” Elliot murmured. She felt like she was on auto-pilot.  _ Too much,  _ her body was screaming at her, the sickness’ sticky hands crawling through her, leaving fingerprints all over her lungs.  _ You’re doing too much.  _ The adrenaline was crashing hard through her body now, and all she wanted to do was puke and then lay down for a nice, long nap. She loosened her grip on his wrist for a moment before letting her hand fall completely from his.

John didn’t say whether or not he believed her, but he stood up slower than he had moved before, peering cautiously around before picking his way out of the brush. He remained (blissfully) silent as Elliot stepped around him; what he lacked in personal relatability, she thought with a sort of familiar dryness, he made up for when he kept his mouth shut.

“Elliot,” he said, ruining her peace, bulldozing over it wildly like he did just about everything else in her life. There was a question somewhere in the way that he said her name, and she felt the pull of the cuffs linking them together when he stopped.

She turned to look at him. He didn’t, for once, look as though he wanted to say something; instead, he was waiting expectantly. For an explanation, she supposed. Or maybe a thank you. That sounded much more like him.

Elliot said, again, “I’m fine,” her hands on her hips, resisting the urge to double over like her body was begging her too. She had never known when to stop, not really, not without someone else telling her. Her mama liked to call it her  _ Too Much _ gene.

John arched a dark brow at her. His mouth curved in something like a smile, but it was too bitter, too wry, too  _ knowing _ to be a real smile. She knew his real smile, even if he didn’t think so. She’d seen it. Boyish and—dare she say—endearing. This was not it.

She gathered up all of her willpower and bit out, “John Seed, if we don’t get moving, we’re going to having marigolds and daisies and what the fuck else blooming right out of our gutted rib cages.”

Whatever had been sitting on John’s face was wiped clean by her words.  _ A good old dose of reality. _ She tugged on the chain impatiently, and he fell into step again with her, trudging through the underbrush.

“And don’t look at me like that,” she snapped out over her shoulder. “I told you, I’m fine.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

Elliot was not fine.

John would admit —to himself, silently, and never under any other circumstances—that he did not know Elliot Honeysett very well. He did, however, know her  _ enough _ . The way she’d gripped his wrist, looking for an anchor; the strange, haunted, disconnected way her eyes had flickered from point to point in the nowhere-in-particular when he spoke to her, never quite looking at him. He’d seen those things in her before. He’d seen that look on her face earlier that morning. He’d seen that strange disconnect, a switch of a flip somewhere in her mind, when she’d certainly considered choking one of the guards to death.

All the same, he reasoned as they trudged up a hill, trying to ignore the distant sounds of gunfire that bode poorly and having been walking for what he could only guess was hours now, it was odd. Having her cling onto him. Clutch his wrist for support. It was—

( _ nice _ )

—strange, to think about Elliot needing him, in the same way the realization had unseated him when he had understood she’d been relying on him to keep her safe at the ranch.

“Did you take that Tylenol?” he asked absently, an afterthought, still mulling over their odd closeness in the woods, trying to pin down why it writhed and squirmed in the cavity of his chest. The sun was beginning to set behind the mountains, and a slow, uneasy chill had crawled through the air. “Back at the ranch.”

“Do I look like an idiot?” Elliot huffed out, pausing halfway up the hill, to try and catch her breath. 

Her voice sounded raspier now, like she’d picked up chain-smoking.  She cocked her head, looking at him for a moment, her hands on her hips; she had Jacob’s old sweats wadded up to her waist— _ so small, _ John thought absently,  _ she’s been losing weight like crazy _ —and an old gray undershirt of his tied in a knot at her stomach. Her ponytail was practically disengaged completely, big chunks of her blonde hair falling into her face and sticking to her cheeks and jaw. She looked feverish, or maybe out of shape, though John suspected it was much more likely to be the former than the latter.

“That was rhetorical, before you consider replying with astonishing honesty,” the blonde snipped out after a moment of breathing.

John replied, “I would hate to disappoint your opinion of me.”

“Cute.” Elliot pushed her way up the last half of the hill, cresting the top and finally— _ finally _ , because he could tell she’d been waiting to do this—bent over at her hips, hands on the tops of her thighs. They were probably a good hundred yards from the ranch now, in the thickest part of the woods and in the farthest reach from the driveway, which Elliot had insisted on. “Good  _ fucking  _ God, I never want to move for the rest of my life.”

“You’d probably feel better if you took that Tylenol I left you.”

“Hey. Hey, John?” She snapped her fingers at him, not looking at him but waving wildly. “Hey. Oh, yeah? Shut the fuck up.”

“Somehow,” John mused, peering through the trees to see if he could get a glimpse of the ranch, “you are even unpleasant when subdued by sickness, deputy.”

He’d become so accustomed to her casual venom that it was almost a comfort, now. He would know something was wrong with her when she  _ wasn’t _ trying to bite his head off, but at least for now, bound together by metal, he knew she wasn’t going to try and kill him. It would be too much of a hassle to try and drag his corpse along through the woods.

_I have to get Faith,_ John thought, eyes straining to see through the trees but his body reluctant to get any closer to the treeline. _I have to get her. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It’s all fucked, the whole lot of it._ _They’ve got her on some shit again. Fuck._

Joseph would be so angry; more than that, Faith was certainly going to be scared out of her mind, once the drugs wore off.

“They’re here.” Elliot’s voice shook him out of his thoughts; she had caught her breath, for now, and wandered closer to the treeline. Her brows furrowed together, and for a second John almost laughed at how ridiculous it was to have her face so serious when she refused to give him back his glasses.

Any humor that he might have felt was ripped away when he followed her gaze to see what he saw: the nondescript gray vans, parked in a semi-circle, leaving an exit down the drive. He watched a few of the men in their dark clothes guiding members of Eden’s Gate into the back of the van. Ase, and Faith, and Ase's red-haired executioner man were nowhere to be seen.

“They aren’t fighting,” John muttered as he watched the members of Eden's Gate hand their weapons over. He felt something sick deep in the pit of his stomach.

“Well, John,” Elliot began, and he thought,  _ don’t fucking say it, _ but she plunged on regardless, “I hate to break it to you, but you’ve got yourself a brood of followers, not leaders.”

“They’re  _ devout _ ,” John insisted bitingly.  _ It _ welled up inside of him—perhaps embarrassment, or humiliation—and he swallowed thickly. “They’re just surviving, that’s all. It would be stupid for them to all get killed.”

The blonde shot him a look through the side of her expression, wary. She didn’t need to say anything for him to figure out what it meant.  _ Sure, John. They certainly let me and the others mow them down no problem, but right now, they’re just surviving. _

“We can’t get into the ranch now,” Elliot ventured after a moment, stepping back from the treeline. “The best thing to do is wait and see if they leave. They don’t strike me as a home-base type of crazy, but you never know; maybe those weird cell-like rooms you put in the basement will tickle their fancy.”

“What?” John demanded. He trailed after her, indignant. “We’re just going to let them take Faith and leave?”

Elliot sighed. She looked to be working something between her teeth, words she wanted to say to him but that she was taking care to mull over first, and he didn’t know if that relieved him or filled him with more dread.

“Yes,” she said after a moment, and he thought,  _ definitely more dread, I like it better when she talks impulsively.  _

“Tell me this is a stupid joke,” John insisted. Elliot’s lashes fluttered. A strange flicker of emotion streaked across her face, as brilliant and short-lived as a shooting start, and his stomach knotted when he thought it might have been pity.

“We have to. They obviously aren’t planning on killing her, John; if they were, they wouldn’t have flaunted her in front of your face,” Elliot replied, starting to walk again, carefully picking her way down a small ravine and then following its slope downwards, towards the river again.

John’s feet moved forward, even when he didn’t want to, even when he wanted to turn back around and storm the ranch and demand Faith be returned back to him. Finally, eventually, he willed himself to stop, as though he only just remembered that he was the bigger of the two of them and carried the most weight in their little red-rover chain.

“We can’t  _ leave her _ with them,” he insisted. “That’s bullshit, deputy. Just because she’s not one of  _ yours _ —”

Elliot turned to look at him. Her eyes were narrowed, and she pulled on the chain,  _ hard _ , the way that John had done to her, yanking him forward abruptly.

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, John Seed, but I’ve got more experience doing rescue missions for people kidnapped by cults than you do.” Her voice was hard, venomous. “They could have Joseph in there at gun-point and I’d still rescue him.”

John felt the anger blooming in his chest. “I never took you for a liar.”

“I was never going to kill a little fucking girl,” Elliot replied viciously. “And that’s what she is, even if Joseph pumped her full of poison. I was never going to kill  _ any _ of you Seeds.”

“No?” John demanded. “Then what?”

A moment of silence stretched between them. It welled with something, _somethingsoemthingsomething_ that John wanted to grapple with his hands and squeeze, but that he couldn't.

She said, after a few heartbeats, “Put you in jail to rot, you fuckhead.” Elliot turned on her heel and started marching again. “Death would be too kind an ending for you.” 

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

By the time they found a spot to stop, it was nearly completely dark. They had walked in almost complete silence after her little proclamation, enough to make him wonder if that odd moment of closeness had been a figment of his imagination after all.

Elliot picked a spot out for them close to the river, but still kept shadowed by the shrubs, and John didn’t have much will to argue with her anymore; her words kept sliding around in his head like marbles.  _ Death would be too kind an ending for you _ .

He knew what she was  _ really _ saying, with that.  _ If I have to suffer with living,  _ her voice said, beyond the words,  _ then so do you. _

The blonde was shivering as she loaded John’s arms up with wood (much to his chagrin; he’d already put this Versace shirt through  _ enough,  _ and now she was doing  _ this _ ), and by the time they got a fire going he thought she might pass out from the entirety of the day.

“Cold, deputy?” John asked mildly, watching her untie the knot of the shirt and slink her arms into the over-sized fabric, huddled by the small fire they’d (she’d) made. She glared at him.

“Well —”

“I haven’t forgotten,” he interjected, as though he could hear it already. “I know you’ve got pneumonia, and it's all my fault, as I willed it upon you.”

“Goody,” Elliot replied. There was no bite in her voice anymore; exhaustion was pulling at the edges of her expression, tugging her voice down, and John felt almost a bit of relief at the knowledge that maybe they were done trading blows. For now.

Lit by firelight, she looked softer. There was still an open wound where she’d really dug her words in, and maybe it was still bleeding a little, but John could feel the evening chill sinking into his bones now too, even with the sleeves of his button-up rolled down. So yes; Elliot did look softer, and smaller, and  _ warmer,  _ and John would be stupid to willingly get pneumonia so that they were both huffing and puffing through the woods.

He acquiesced, after a moment of silence and as though relenting to his own mental argument, “It would be warmer if we shared body heat.”

The look she shot him might as well have been daggers. “What,” she quipped, “being handcuffed to me isn’t enough for you?” _I suppose we aren't done trading blows after all._

“Look,  _ I’m _ not dressed for a Montana night out in the woods,” he insisted, “and certainly neither are you. You’re already sick.” 

Elliot scoffed and rolled her eyes.

He ventured, again, “You already said we can’t leave the fire burning all night. The smoke would give us away.”

“And I’m also saying that there’s no way in fucking hell I’m letting you spoon me,” Elliot replied, closing her eyes. “If you get hypothermia, then maybe it’s the karmic universe telling you to go fuck yourself.”

“Oh, very nice, deputy.”

He sighed, stretched out on his side and drinking up as much of the fire’s warmth as he could before Elliot would, inevitably, stamp it out and try to get some sleep. The ground was soft and mossy, and while John couldn’t stand the idea of sleeping in the same clothes he’d been running around in, the day  _ had _ begun to take its toll on him.

“If you change your mind,” John continued, “I can assure you I’m an  _ excellent  _ big spoon.”

Elliot scoffed, again, and he thought,  _ oh, well. Maybe the karmic universe will serve me something after all, but we’ll have to wait and see,  _ and let his eyes drift shut.

He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he first felt a change. It could have been thirty minutes, or a few hours; Elliot’s sleep schedule was so unknown to him—and certainly changed by her illness—that he couldn’t have wagered if he wanted to. But he was still mostly asleep when he felt the warmth of her body tucked against his, shivering, like a leaf in the wind. There was still a soft detergent scent to her clothes, even after everything, and her head fit just under his chin.

John shifted. He didn’t need to open his eyes to tell it was Elliot, and not a bear or mountain lion trying to find the best way to carve out his intestines; Elliot’s hair brushed along his jaw, and she pulled his arm over her like a blanket.

“Is this my karmic retribution?” he rumbled, half asleep still. Elliot’s teeth chattered.

“Just consider this making yourself useful,” she replied. Her voice was muffled from her face being tucked against his shirt. “Now shut up and go to sleep.”

“Yes, boss.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

He had expected to get woken up gently, by the rising sun, or perhaps the feeling of Elliot disengaging from their only-for-warmth spooning session. 

Instead, John was woken abruptly by the feeling of a cold, wet nose pressing into his face, hot,  _ stinking _ breath whuffling across his face.

“What —the fuck—”

John swatted the air blindly, the smell of dog breath wafting over his face as he struggled into a sitting position. It took a moment for him to right himself, to get a good grasp on his surroundings; their handcuffs were still linked. Elliot was awake, and sitting up already, and  _ beaming _ as a Blue Heeler stared at John. 

As soon as his eyes landed on the dog, it barked at him. Loudly. All of the hair on the hound’s spine rose, all the way down to the base of its tail, and a low, nasty growl rose in its throat.

“Boomer,” Elliot said, and immediately the dog sat. Boomer’s eyes darted between Elliot and John, wary and uncertain. The blonde, however, looked happier than John thought he’d ever seen her, reaching out and ruffling the dog’s hair until it lay flat again, smiling. “Look, John, Boomer found us.”

“Oh,” John replied, “your killer beast. Excellent.”

Elliot laughed. It was as though Boomer was waiting for the sound; he barked, happily this time (could dogs bark in different tones, John wondered), tail wagging furiously as he crowded Elliot for her attention.

“Don’t worry,” the blonde said, giving John a sly look, “he only bites on command.”


	5. acta non verba

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teamwork makes the dream work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the gang is finally getting somewhere in this chapter! Sometimes, a family is two murderers and their dog, that also wants to kill one of them, and that's okay.
> 
> I was pretty nervous about writing this chapter, because I feel like I slog _so hard_ through combat sequences just to have them feel like they drag, so I hope it reads okay!! Big thank you to [Starcrier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrier/pseuds/Starcrier), who consistently lets me babble to her about these two dumbasses and also beta-reads all of my garbage all the time (and says she likes doing it???? Okay???). She is a pure angel and incredible writer and deserves all of the love and attention, so please go check out her stuff!
> 
> Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who leaves feedback, and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> As always, you can find me on [tumblr](https://proudspires.tumblr.com/) posting about dumb shit all the time.

Joey Hudson is her best friend.

Joey Hudson is her best friend, because she teaches Elliot how to tell if a lipstick color isn’t going to work for her (anything orange-hued), and how hard to close her eyes when Joey pours hydrogen peroxide on her scraped knee from sneaking back in her through her window, and how to laugh until her stomach aches, tucked into her tiny twin bed with a movie playing on her laptop.

They do just about everything together. Joey doesn’t mind that sometimes Elliot’s mama drinks a little too much, and she doesn’t mind that Elliot doesn’t talk about where her daddy’s gone (or if she even knows where he is; they both come to understand, very quickly, that it doesn’t matter). Joey doesn’t mind these things, and instead she makes them her own, solidifying Elliot as her very own honorary sister.

It’s nice. It’s nice, because Joey’s mama  _ doesn’t _ drink too much, and cooks often, and doesn’t mind how frequently Elliot stays the night.

Joey Hudson is her best friend, and when Elliot is a little drunk in a bar and thinks about letting someone like John Duncan take her home and have his way with her, Joey swoops in and takes her out of the line of fire just in time.

“What is wrong with you?” Joey is laughing, erasing any thought that she might be serious, as they stand outside the bar in the gravel parking lot. Elliot’s face is hot from the alcohol and Joey smushes her cheeks together. “Letting a rich boy like John Duncan try and whisk you away? Who are you and what have you done with my Elli?”

“It’s still me!” Elliot protests. She’s laughing, too, and then she groans, resting her forehead on Joey’s shoulder. “Joey, he’s  _ so attractive.  _ How can someone be so attractive? I’ve never had a type, but—”

“Attractive, and no good.” Joey pats her head affectionately. “A man like that is no good.” She pulls back and smoothes the hair out of Elliot’s face. “C’mon then, darlin’. Let’s go home and watch one of those horrible Hallmark movies to get your mind off of our awfully attractive, awfully no-good friend in there.”

Elliot pouts. She is two drinks in and already in no shape to drive. “I can pick?”

Joey nods, quite sagely. “Yes. If you say to me that John Duncan is no good.”

“Fine.” Elliot sighs. “John Duncan is no good.”

They start walking towards Joey’s car, gravel crunching underfoot, and Elliot rests her head against the brunette’s shoulder. Joey says, “And now is the part where you say,  _ thank you, Joey, for always looking out for me and _ —”

Elliot stops in front of the car, exhaling. “Thank you, Jo,” she says. “Really. You’re my favorite person.” 

Joey squeezes her shoulders. “And you’re mine, El,” she promises, her eyes full and warm as she grins. “Even if I don't know what you'd do without me.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

_ John Duncan is no good, _ Elliot thought.

He was no good, certainly; especially now, especially as John Seed, but—

“Hey, dog,” John said to Boomer, sitting as far away as he can, the cuffs pulled taut between them. He couldn’t have sounded less enchanted if he wanted to; Elliot could tell his exact feelings about the Heeler having found them. And, of course, she knew Boomer’s feelings about  _ John _ , in particular.

John shifted where he sat, and Boomer growled. The brunette shot her a murderous look.

“How do you propose we rescue your Deputy Hudson if your beast won’t let me move?” he asked her tartly. Elliot rubbed the top of Boomer’s head thoughtfully; immediately, the growling stopped, and he relaxed again, though she knew her boy was just  _ waiting _ for the signal to rip John’s throat out.

She felt lighter than she had in days. Safer. Happier. Warmer.

“Weren’t you listening?” Elliot’s voice was only dry for the comedy of her words. “He’d only bite you if I told him to. He’s not a wild animal.”

“Oh, yes, because my lack of faith in your good feelings about me is completely misplaced,” John replied. His voice was terse. He came to a stand, keeping a wary eye on Boomer, and brushed his jeans off before stretching his arms out in front of him. 

In a situation where he had been stripped of all of his power, of all of the people chanting  _ yes _ to whatever it was he was doing, John felt—looked— _ sounded _ —

_ Normal. _

She didn’t want to think about that. Any time John did something that felt human, it erased the very recent actions he’d taken as a crazy cult leader. Kidnapping her. Considering drowning her (though as time went on, she thought he wouldn’t have followed through; it wasn’t his style).

_ My parents are the ones who taught me the Power of Yes, _ his voice had crackled through the radio at her, once, in what felt like a different life —a life that felt coppery and slick with blood, but where she’d felt at home in the violence, where she’d been comfortable.  _ Now I’m going to give that power to you. _

Elliot whistled, and Boomer took off into the brush, the movement causing John to hesitate just for a moment before he relaxed. She fought back a smile and said, “Let’s see if our friends are still around, shall we?”

“Yes,” John acquiesced after a moment, not that he had much of a choice; she was already picking her way through the underbrush, tugging him along with her. There were just a few moments of blissful silence before he said, “You know, deputy, this wasn’t the way I had originally pictured having you in handcuffs,” and Elliot thought,  _ oh, yes, there’s the John I know.  _ She yanked a little on the cuffs linking them together, nearly causing John to trip over himself.

“Funny,” Elliot replied sweetly, “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

“You are such a child.” John’s voice was low, and threatening. She flashed her most charming smile at him.

“You’re much funnier when you’re not acting like a psycho. I think I’m even beginning to enjoy my time with you.”

She climbed up the ravine’s slope, leaning into the tilt of it, feeling a bit fresher than before but still bogged down by the urge to cough. Her throat itched and her eyes watered, by the time she got to the top and crouched in the treeline, John lingering close behind.

There was only one gray van parked there, now. Elliot could see maybe one man guarding the entrance, but who knew how many people were inside? Even when they’d had their first run-in down on the highway, she’d thought she’d had a solid head count until they came crawling out of the woodwork, like termites.

Which only made her more paranoid about creeping around in the woods, too.

“I don’t think we’re going to have any better odds than this,” Elliot murmured. “If we wait any longer they might have more people here. There’s a radio in there, right? We can get in touch with…”

Her voice trailed off. It was an argument she didn’t want to have right then, with John —who they were going to talk to first, whether they’d be radioing the resistance or if they’d be reaching out to Joseph to let him know what was going on, if he didn’t know already; surely, someone like Joseph Seed would be practically omnipotent to what was going on  _ his domain,  _ though Elliot would never presume to know what the fuck was going on in his head.

“Joseph,” John said, infuriatingly erasing Elliot’s hope to let sleeping dogs lie, even for a moment.

“We can argue about the logistics of contacting sane people with resources versus your psycho brother once we have access to the radio,” Elliot snipped. She crept forward in the brush; Boomer was crouched a few feet to her left, waiting patiently for her signal, but every muscle in the heeler’s body was tensed and ready.

Elliot held out her hand for him, a silent, noiseless signal,  _ stay _ , and he laid down on the ground obediently, obscured by the sunlight dappling through his bush of hiding choice. There was no way she was letting someone put a round of bullets in him.

“Keep your arm relaxed,” Elliot muttered, beginning to ease out into the field.

“This one?” John whispered back, rolling the shoulder of the arm farthest from her.

“No, dumbass, the one I’m—”

“I know, deputy, I was trying to lighten the mood.”

“Consider retiring from your comedy career _. _ ”

It was nice, at least; dare she even say  _ refreshing _ , to find John annoying after having spooned willingly with him all night.

Every instinct in Elliot’s body—the ones she had before, and the ones that she came to develop with the insurgence of Eden’s Gate both—was screaming. This big, open field, its grass only barely tall enough to obscure them from the sight of the guard, felt exactly like the field that Bambi had to cross, worried about being caught in the crosshairs of a hunter on the prowl.

Halfway across the field, Elliot caught herself mid-stumble over a lump in the ground; as she regained her balance and glanced down and identified the source of the fresh, wet earth now sticking to her knees and hands, she felt her stomach churn violently.

It was a row of shallow graves, freshly-dug. The bodies that were buried were completely obscured except for their faces. Like Waylon’s, their eyes had been scooped out and replaced with short-stem blooms—vibrant, clean, new. Done recently, just like the graves, which means they were probably killed recently, too. They were clearly Eden’s Gate. Their scruffy hair and tanned complexions, even in death, gave that away; but each grave was lined with a fresh butterfly weed, vibrant and gorgeous orange against the dark earth.

“Sick,” Elliot managed out, her voice wobbling, feeling the nausea welling up inside of her. John’s face was tight and hard, and there was something about it—like maybe he didn’t care if they died for  _ him _ , but he didn’t like that  _ someone else _ had brought this death to them, that it didn’t serve the purpose of Eden’s Gate at all to have it happen like this.

Stuffing down the urge to puke, Elliot pressed on with John close at her back. They crept their way up the hill to the side of the ranch house, though it was more like a mansion than anything else now that she could see it up close without being too busy looking everywhere else. In the distance, not too far away, she heard the sound of the guard in front of the door saying something to himself, or maybe into a radio, walking absently into view with his back still to them.

He wore the same dark boots that Elliot recognized from the men who had been hunting them down in the woods, but he otherwise looked to be in civilian clothes. Well—except for the machine gun slung around his neck. The sight of  _ that _ made Elliot’s fingers itch.

She held up a finger to her mouth to John, creeping forward. The cultist ahead of them hummed something under his breath and tapped his fingers against the barrel of the gun to his imaginary beat.

Her heart thrummed in her chest, but for all of the sickness in her body and the poor sleep and the ragged feeling of being trapped in close quarters with John Seed for what had to be over twenty-four hours by now, in this little heartbeat of a moment she felt  _ clear. _

Elliot stood and threw her hand forward, up and over to one side of the man’s head. She felt the drag of John’s weight against her own, like he hadn’t been keeping his arm slack like she’d told him to, and by the time she got the loop of the handcuff chain over his face he saw her out of the corner of his eye and started to turn, his expression warping into something more vicious than relaxed.

She yanked her arm hard to the right, criss-crossing over John’s own, which hovered with uncertainty in the air, until the chain pulled  _ tight  _ across the cultist’s throat; immediately his eyes went wide, and instead of scrabbling for his gun he reached to try and give himself any breath of air.

Noise started to eek out of his mouth, his tongue moving like he wanted to say something as his hands fought desperately to get between the metal chain and his neck. He was going to scream, if he got the chance, or call for help or sound some alarm that she didn’t need to have happen, and Elliot thought,  _ not on my fucking watch _ just before she stomped her foot into the back of his knee, watching as he crumpled until his kneecaps hit the dirt; almost like an instinct, John’s foot came up to the back of his head and slammed his face into the side of the ranch building.

The body went slack, and then slumped against the ground, blood smearing the side of the building wall. She didn’t think he was dead, but he was quiet—for now—and that was what was important. It wasn’t like they were going to stay very long.

“I told you to keep your fucking arm relaxed,” Elliot hissed, as she and John untangled themselves from the man’s neck. His nose was almost certainly broken, which was a nice little treat of a detail. Something for her to be happy about in these trying times. 

“Maybe you could be a bit more clear about your plans next time,” John snapped back, still keeping his voice low and quiet. It didn’t seem like there were any other guards outside, but that was something that Elliot wasn’t going to trust. “I guess we’re just lucky that I’ve got good instincts when it comes to—”

Elliot slapped a hand over his mouth. “Shut the  _ fuck up _ , John. Do you not understand the concept of  _ sneaking? _ ”

John made a low, muffled noise of protest, pushing her hand off of his face before they moved past the guard to the front door. It was unlocked, when John pushed the handle down and eased it open; they didn’t see anyone immediately, but she could hear low chatter coming from a different room.

She glanced back at John and then gestured him forward. He made a face at her, rolling his eyes with enough exaggeration that she almost scoffed—as though he were saying,  _ oh, sure, now that there’s more than one guy, I’ll go first. _ Elliot feigned innocence at what he could possibly be scowling at her for, but in reality, it made the most sense—he knew where the radio was, and he knew the layout of the ranch better than she did.

John straightened up, moving down the first hallway until they got came around the staircase; a shovel was leaned up the wall, still wet with dirt, and the brunette ahead of her steadied it on the wall so that they couldn’t risk knocking it over and alerting their houseguests. Their armed, presumably crazy, houseguests.

The two men inside the living room said something to each other, one of them pacing to the back of the living room for the window, and this time John made eye contact with her before she nodded, silently; choke one out, get the last one out of the way. 

As soon as he stepped forward, the floorboard creaked violently under the shift of his weight, and both heads snapped to look at them.

Their eyes on the two of them—first on John and then on her, narrowing and pin-pointing her like a predator—made Elliot’s adrenaline kick into high gear. There was one brief moment, a heart-beat long, where nobody moved, before Elliot saw the closest cultist to them begin to ease his hand down to the radio on his hip.

_ No time,  _ she thought, reaching blindly until her hands found the wooden handle of the shovel.  _ No time, no time. _

Elliot snapped out, “Down!” to John just in time for him to obey the command— _ so he did learn the first time after all _ —and she swung the head of the shovel like a baseball bat before it connected directly with the cultist’s face, slamming into him with the full force of all that adrenaline pumping through her body.

As soon as she felt the satisfying connection, she heard the sound of more rustling and suddenly remembered the second cultist, in the back of the living room. He had a furious look on his face, his gun already in his hand, and he lifted it to train it right at her.

It was not the first time she’d had a gun pointed at her face, and it would certainly not be the last; but still, there was something that settled deep in her stomach, something she recognized as  _ fear _ , bitter and cold, the second the cultist smiled at her and said in his thickly-accented, “Put your shovel down, pretty bird. If you do, I will be nice to you and your boyfriend.”

He took a step forward, gun still leveled at her, and then at John, and then back at her. Her fingers tightened their grip on the handle of the shovel, hesitant, panicked—why wasn’t he shooting? Why wasn’t he killing them right now? Why was he looking at them (and it was  _ them _ , not just  _ her _ ) like that?

Elliot didn’t have much time to think about it. As soon as the cultist took another step, John leveraged his free hand behind the nearby curio cabinet and shoved it, shouting, “ _ Now _ , Elliot—” and rocked it with such immediate force that the whole thing groaned with the ache of gravity. The cultist darted forward as the cabinet began to crash down, attempting to crush him, snarling something in foreign at them viciously just as Elliot swung the shovel straight into his face.

She felt, this time, the impact of his bones against the metal, vibrating deep into her hands and all the way up her arms as the shovel. Blood from the slap of the shovel against his mouth sprayed the wall, a tooth or two scattering across the floor, and his body collapsed back atop the now-deposed cabinet, gun clattering to the floor.

For a second, they were both quiet, listening and waiting to hear the sound of furious feet stomping up the stairs, angry voices coming to assist their fallen comrades; but there was nothing. The house was empty. The sound of soft classical music playing from the radio filtered through the haze of her brain, a sound she hadn’t recognized because of the roaring in her ears when she’d seen their hunters in person.

“Let’s move, deputy,” John said, reaching and grabbing the gun off of the floor. “We’ll see what all they left us.” She nodded, feeling a little winded, and dropped the shovel on the ground with a collection of noise; the knowledge that it had been used to bury those men and women made her skin crawl, and she was sure the disgust showed on her face. John eyed her for a moment and said, “You don’t feel like keeping that?”

Elliot shot him a look. “We can pick it up on our way out if we really want it.”

They picked their way up the stairs to the room that had been John’s—or, rather, that Elliot presumed was his, because he moved toward it with such purpose she thought it could only be that. But it felt barely lived-in, the bed still pristinely made and no sign of someone actually existing in it anywhere, save for a small table with a chair pushed up against with an empty walkie-talkie holder sitting in it.

“Gone,” John said, his jaw working absently in what Elliot knew now to be a tick he had. “Well—”

“It’s better,” Elliot said, “that we don’t have radios.  _ They _ have the radios. I saw one on that guy’s belt, which means they’re probably in the same channel we’d use anyway.” She frowned. “They don’t need to hear where we’re going.”

“We heard where  _ you _ were going,” John pointed out, reminding Elliot of the many times that he had interfered with her own radio to threaten her. 

“I didn’t care,” Elliot replied, “because I had an idea of what you’re capable of. I don’t have that with these…”

John nodded. “Yeah.”

A heartbeat of a moment stretched between them, long enough for the unsaid words to go:  _ I don’t know what they’ll do with Faith, I don’t know what they’ll do to Joey. Too much to risk. _

“Well,” she murmured, coughing into her elbow and taking a laborious breath, “we can lift the van out of here and hopefully go unnoticed, and get to Fall’s End—”

“Where everyone wants me dead,” John deadpanned. “If someone is going to be capable of rescuing Faith, it’s going to be Joseph, and Jacob.”

“If someone is going to be capable of rescuing  _ Joey, _ ” Elliot snapped back, “it’s going to be the resistance. I don’t want to argue about this, John—”

“So don’t.” John’s voice was hard and smooth, the way he spoke when he was trying to get some stupid confession out of her. “Agree to go to Joseph first.” And then, in that  _ infuriating _ preaching voice he used and that wicked glimmer in his eyes, he added, “Just say yes.”

She let out a long, sharp breath, exhaling it until her lungs ached with the effort of it, her head pounding. There was almost no likelihood of them being able to get out of these cuffs until they got to Fall’s End  _ or _ to Joseph, and so that meant they were stuck together one way or another.

“If we go to Fall’s End,” John ventured, closing some distance between them, “we’re going to put a big, fat target on the Resistance.”

Elliot tilted her chin defiantly, having to in order to make straight eye contact with him now. “And you’re willing to do that to your brothers?”

John shrugged. “There’s always been a target on them, deputy. This will be no different.”

Somehow, Elliot didn’t believe that was true; but if John wanted to put his family in danger again, then so be it.

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

“Close your eyes, Jonathan.”

John grimaced. “That isn’t my name, deputy.”

“The sentiment remains the same,” Elliot insisted, and he heaved a sigh before he closed his eyes. He heard fabric rustling, the sound of Elliot kicking off the boots she’d been wearing and then sliding out of the sweats she’d been in for the entirety of their tied-together time. She’d already raided the bathroom to pack a backpack with water and Tylenol, in addition to a few loose granola bars from the kitchen; now, it was just getting out of those sweats, which he could only assume she was probably relieved about.

“I  _ am _ facing away from you,” John reiterated, his eyes dutifully closed even when there was a part of him that wanted to make her squirm. “I don’t see the point in closing my eyes .”

“It’s not about  _ you _ , you egomaniac,” Elliot sighed. “It’s about  _ my _ comfort. Eyes shut.”

“Scout’s honor.”

She scoffed. With his eyes closed, his back turned to her, he could hear the sound of her shimmying into what he could only presume where her jeans, stuffing her feet back into her boots, and then—the small, quiet clicking of her gathering the pills off of the count and taking a large swallow of water.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ve drugged you?” John asked dryly, turning to look at her now. She watched him with a flat expression.

“Then you’d have to haul my body around,” Elliot replied. “I didn’t say you could look.”

John’s gaze lingered on her, just for a moment; maybe a little longer than he would have liked her to know, but it was easier to steal looks at her when she was focused elsewhere. “You’re perfectly suitable for society, Deputy Honeysett.”

“That’s Junior Deputy to you, asshole.” She swallowed back the last of the water and shook her head, grimacing. “I hate pills.”

“What are you, nine?”

“Fuck off.” She was still in the over-sized undershirt of his, tied like a little summer blouse at her belly-button, exposing skin there that looked—now that he was staring—to be the home of a few gossamer scars. The question of where they came from itched on his tongue, and he only barely kept it to himself.

“So,” she said.

“So,” John parroted, eyes flickering up from her exposed abdomen to her face. He knew what she was going to say; that she agreed with him, that they were going to go find Joseph first and then get Faith and Joey back, because Elliot may have been a capable killer but if she didn’t need to put the people of Hope County in danger, she wasn’t going to. 

“Fall’s End needs to know what’s going on,” Elliot began. “But I don’t want them to see us driving there—”

John nodded somberly. “Uh-huh.”

She glared at him. “—so we can put your stupid fucking brother in the crosshairs,” she continued, biting the words out, “but the second we get there I use a radio and get ahold of Jerome. Also, I drive.”

John’s lip curled involuntarily at the mention of Pastor Jeffries. One of his  _ least _ favorite Resistance members, if he was going to be asked to rank them. Pious, holier-than-thou, and  _ oh-so-patronizing _ when it came to their beliefs.

“Fine,” John said. “But only if you promise not to go off-roading.”

“No promises,” Elliot snipped. He flashed her a smile, which apparently did not win her over, because she followed it up with, “And if this deal gets broken in any single way, whether it’s on the way there or when we get there, I’ll fucking kill you.”

She headed for the door while he barked out a laugh, looking more put-together now, jogging up the steps and pulling him along with her. They made one stop in the living room—to grab the other gun, and then the van key, which she managed to find in one of the pockets. They left both radios; they felt like traps, beacons for someone to find them. His eyes were trained on her, watching each assured movement as she pulled useful things off of the dead body; a clip of ammo, a throwing knife.

“You’re telling me that you’re going to lug  _ my _ dead body around if you don’t get to call your little friends?” John asked. 

A wolfish grin had made its home on his face, and as she straightened up into a standing position again, Elliot shot him a look. There was something in her expression that was  _ almost _ playful, but the words that came out of her mouth were, “Oh, John, I’d find a way to cut your arm off before I let you slow me down.”

It shouldn’t have been as endearing as it was, a part of John reasoned; it certainly made his jaw set in defiance, but his heart stuttered a little at the words, and that’s what he hated about it, that he thought,  _ we’re not so unlike each other, Rook. _

He didn’t trust himself to speak just yet, so he walked outside with Elliot and said, “You don’t want that gun?” and pointed at the (now surely dead) guard they had assaulted earlier. She shook her head.

“Too heavy,” she replied briskly. “And I don’t trust you with it.” She brought her fingers to her lips and whistled sharply, once; John watched the treeline, but he didn’t  _ see _ Boomer until the dog was sprinting up the hill, not once having spotted his form in the field.  _ No wonder that dog’s caused so many problems, _ he thought dryly.

Elliot ruffled Boomer’s ears, saying something sweet to him that he didn’t quite catch because he was too busy watching the beast warily. Boomer seemed only interested in doing the same thing to him; occasionally, his tail would wag when Elliot patted him, but it would immediately drop for him to cock his head inquisitively at John.

He scoffed under his breath. The dog was cute, in its own master-killer way. He guessed.

Elliot opened the back of the van first, shooing Boomer in and closing the doors before making her way to the passenger door and unlocking it. She slid into the driver’s seat from there, John obediently following suit, and quickly clipping his seatbelt into place.

“I’m getting flashbacks from the last time I was in a car with you driving,” he said dryly when she shot him a curious look. 

“Poor baby.” Elliot dropped his sunglasses from the top of her head down onto her nose, sticking the key in the ignition and turning it. The van purred to life. It was a nicer one than the ones Eden’s Gate used, and she reached past him to rifle around in the glove box before she found what she was looking for: a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“Really, deputy?” John asked dryly, as she lit the cigarette in the van and rolled the window down. He saw, behind the blue tint of  _ his sunglasses, _ her eyes roll dramatically. “I didn’t know you smoked.” And then, with a little incredulous laugh, “You’re  _ sick. _ ”

“You’re fucking right I’m sick, and stressed out. I’ve got Tylenol in the bag and I’m a big girl.” She eyed him through the sunglasses, and quipped, “What’re you going to do, tattle on me to God?” before she was laughing at her own joke and cranking the wheel of the van so she could throw it in reverse. “I’m going to need this whole pack if I’m going to survive a mini road trip with the likes of  _ you _ , John Seed.”

“You shouldn’t mock the faith, deputy.”

“ _ You shouldn’t mock the faith, _ ” Elliot repeated, shifting into drive. “You sound stupid when you say that shit. I know you don’t believe it.”

He chose not to entertain her ridiculous accusation, glancing out the window. “If you think _ this _ is stressful,” John rumbled, settling back against his seat as she wound the van down the drive of the ranch, “consider that your road trip is taking you to your in-laws. I’m your boyfriend, remember?”

“Fuck off.” She took a drag of the cigarette, tapping it out of the window. “I’ll throw this van over a cliff if you call yourself my boyfriend again.”

Her venom really  _ was _ a comfort, he thought; if he didn’t know better, he would have thought he liked it.

He did. The dramatics of her vitriol pushed a grin on to his face.

“Oh, I certainly was right about you, deputy,” he drawled, rolling his window down as they hit the highway. “Your sin  _ is _ wrath.”


	6. dark, and drenched in longing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm serious as hunger. I'm terrified. My heart is in mourning. But it's dawning. Our seeds sprout. I'm dawning." — Clarice Lispector, tr. by Johnny Lorenz, _Um Sopro de Vida_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm going to keep these short and sweet because, basically, I have nothing to say for myself. I hope you guys enjoy! I mean it when I say every comment makes my day, every kudos brightens my life. I swear I'm just as awkward in a real conversation as I sound in these notes and I'm not scary at all, so please feel free to come and say hi on my tumblr @ proudspires!
> 
> Some warnings in this chapter include John being himself, canon-typical violence, and the forced use of psychotropic drugs (also canon-typical? I think?). I've changed the rating of this fic as we wander more into this territory and also in anticipation of where it's going, though this chapter contains nothing explicit (except for Elliot's deep-seated disdain for John Seed and everything he stands for).
> 
> As always, thank you again to everyone who reads! I am so happy to be back in a writing groove with these two idiots again.

Theirs was a strange sort of allyship.

Tentative, to be sure, and certainly strained. But if four days ago you’d told John that he’d be sitting in a van with _Junior Deputy_ Elliot Honeysett driving him straight to his brother, the man she'd slapped cuffs on and tried to arrest at the behest of a U.S. marshal, he’d have laughed in your face. The idea was ridiculous. Expansively, endlessly, _incredibly_ ridiculous.

And yet, if John ignored the clink of the cuffs binding them together, and the knowledge that this van belonged to a strange, traveling band of cultists, he _almost_ felt like he had been tricked into some kind of fucked-up romcom. As soon as they hit the highway, Elliot turned the radio on to the resistance’s repaired music channels, smoked her cigarette down, and leaned back against her seat as though she had not been viciously threatening to kill him just days ago.

Did she still think that? Did he care? John felt his brows furrow and he turned his head away, watching the treeline. He didn’t think he cared. He would say, _so what if Elliot still wants to kill me?_ She _needed_ him, and that was more than he’d gotten out of her in the whole time that she’d been under his thumb.

He didn’t care if she still wanted to kill him, and the thought that maybe she _might_ did not thrill him, and he was not distracted by the stretch of her midriff when she shifted in her seat, and—

—And these were all things that he didn’t struggle with, certainly, because if asked, John would say that _yes,_ he supposed that Elliot Honeysett could be considered conventionally _attractive_ , but only when she wasn’t baring her teeth like a wild animal, only when she didn’t have a gun in her hands, only when she wasn’t making you say _please_ to save the life of someone you didn’t even know the name of.

So, yes, he supposed, she was pretty: and John did not know why in particular he had to leap through those loops to get to that point silently, by himself, but, here he was.

“Oh, I _love_ this song,” Elliot announced suddenly, turning the volume up and startling John out of the reverie he’d plunged himself into. His eyes narrowed when he recognized the song; the very typical back-water-town radio station playing Guns’N’Roses was _not_ beyond his comprehension, and yet he found himself displeased nonetheless.

“Really, deputy?” John asked, staring at her across the console. “You _love_ this song?”

Elliot dropped her glasses— _my glasses,_ John reminded himself irritably—down the bridge of her nose so she could stare at him over the top of them. “It’s a classic, John.”

The radio blared the chorus of _Welcome To The Jungle_ , and John said, “I cannot take you seriously with this music.”

She laughed, apparently pleased by his disdain, cranked the volume higher. Over the sound of aggressive guitar riffs sliding up and down and Boomer barking excitedly in the back, John shouted, “Why don’t we just alert everyone of where we are, hm?”

“Oh, you’re spoiling the fun.” She turned the volume back down, _tsking_ her tongue, and John rolled his eyes. It was so very typical Elliot, to want to enjoy herself at the exact moment that he was trying to remind himself of all the reasons that he disliked her.

A period of silence stretched between them; tranquil, blissful, just for one moment, before John’s gaze slid back to her. She _did_ look peaceful, at that moment, her ponytail smooth and adjusted, her brows relaxed, coughing occasionally into the crook of her elbow but otherwise breathing fine. Relaxed. At ease—with him, of all people. Wouldn't she be furious to know it?

John’s fingers itched. _Soft,_ he thought, reminded of Joseph’s words; _you have to love them, John._ It wasn’t his style, not particularly, more suited to persuasion rather than fostering mercy as Joseph did. 

He kept his voice light and casual when he asked, “Where did you get your scars, deputy?”

He watched—and watched _and watched_ —to catch her reaction. He couldn’t see her eyes through the reflective shades she wore, but he did see the way her fingers tightened on the wheel, saw the push and pull of her jaw muscle as her teeth worked in her mouth, grinding, perhaps crushing the words she wanted to say between them. He braced himself for the vitriol; it would certainly be something along the lines of, _I got them from Go Fuck Yourself USA, John, I’m the goddamn mayor_ or any suitable string of expletives.

Instead, Elliot prompted, “Who’s asking?”

John’s eyes narrowed. “Pardon?”

“I said, _who’s asking?”_ she reiterated, not once looking at him. “Is this John Seed, or John Duncan?” Hearing her say the name like this—as though John _Duncan_ were at all comparable to the man that John _Seed_ was—made his chest prickle, anger and disdain welling up inside of him.

“That’s not my name,” John bit out. “Don’t play games with _me,_ deputy—”

“I know your fucking cult psycho-bombing tactics, Seed,” Elliot replied, her voice sharp and quick as a whip. John opened his mouth to protest, but she went on, “You might think you’re being clever, waiting until I crack a smile to ask me an invasive question, but you’re not. First, you ask me where my scars come from, and when I open up about my past traumas—”

“So it’s a trauma,” John insisted, but Elliot was already railroading on; any footing he felt he’d had was gone.

“—then you say some stupid shit like, _have you ever really felt at home with your family, Deputy Honeysett? I could give you a home, Deputy Honeysett,_ which you _would_ say, because for some reason you don’t understand the concept of someone being a _Junior_ Deputy or having a first name—”

“It was _just_ a question, _Elliot_ ,” John interrupted, effectively ending her barrage. “I was only trying to make small talk with you. I noticed them back at the ranch, and since we’re in a car for several hours together, I thought…”

Elliot’s lips pressed into a thin line. “There’s your first mistake, then. You tried to form a cohesive train of thought.” Her voice dripped with a honeyed, pitiful timbre, “I know how hard that is for you.”

“Alright, thank you for this stimulating conversation, you literal child,” John snipped out. “And you’re still wearing my fucking glasses, by the way.”

“Take them back, then.”

John stared at her. The idea of putting his hand close to Elliot’s face was not only a dangerous one because it was in close proximity to her teeth—proven by her many run-ins with his acolytes before to be suitable weapons in a pinch—but because he _worried._

He worried that the willingness for soft contact would make _him_ soft, the way it had felt when Elliot tucked herself against his chest to combat the chilly Montana evening. He worried that getting familiar and comfortable with a feral and untamed creature like Elliot Honeysett would change him, and to be _changed_ by someone like _her_ —

“Consider them a gift.” He kept his voice clipped. “From me to you. They’re Gucci, you know.”

“Oh, _very_ generous of you, Herald. What, little old me, nobody Elliot from Hope County, Nowhere-Montana, with her first pair of _Gucci_ shades? Why, I’d _never_.” A little bit of a sweet Southern-belle drawl slipped in there, and John didn’t know if it was because of the dramatics or if it was an accent she’d mostly lost and only occasionally regained.

But his stomach twisted a little when she used his title, the patronizing drip of her tone going straight to the headache blooming behind his eyes. “You know, deputy—”

Instinctively, he paused; he waited for her timely interjection, as she was so comfortable doing, but yet again the moment he anticipated it she remained silent. Elliot arched a dark-honey eyebrow and waited. John cleared his throat.

“I think I’ve never met a more troubled woman than you,” he continued casually. “To suspect me of such foul intentions when I only want to know my driving companion better, I’m genuinely wounded.”

“That’s very sweet of you,” Elliot acquiesced, and for a moment—just one teeny-tiny moment—John thought she meant it; and then she said, “But I’d prefer we not get too friendly, as you were just considering drowning me in a river filled with drugs a few days ago, and...”

The blonde’s words trailed off. The van rolled to a crawl, and when he looked forward, he saw the remains of the fire assault that they had just escaped a day ago; two Eden’s Gate trucks, and flimsy barricades that had been pushed off of the road. No bodies in sight.

It was almost a relief, if he was being honest—he wasn’t sure how many more flower-stuffed corpses he could see before he finally decided to rip his own eyeballs out.

Any playful heat had died out of Elliot’s expression. She was somber now, the lines of her expression harder than before. In the back of the van, Boomer whined, and John could hear the swishing of his tail against the floor.

“I don’t like that they took the bodies,” she said after a moment.

“Me either.”

The next thirty minutes of the drive passed in strange, awkward silence. Elliot looked like she wanted to say something and wouldn’t; he could feel her gaze dipping over to him on occasion, but each time he thought her mouth was opening to let out what was on her mind, she’d just exhale. By the time they’d cleared the field where the tracks from their last ride had dug in and left the barricade far behind them, dark, heavy storm clouds had rolled in; he rolled his window down and felt the heady pre-storm humidity like a slap in the face.

 _No good,_ John thought, a few drops hitting his hand before he rolled up the window. He felt the thunder rumble deep in the marrow of his bones. The rain went from a drizzle to a steady silver sheet, and then to a torrential downpour by the time they’d been driving for just under an hour, and eventually Elliot pulled to the side of the road.

“We have to pull in somewhere,” she announced. “This van is great for toting cults around, but it’s _not_ great for avoiding hydroplaning off of the road.”

“Well, isn’t off-roading your specialty?” John quipped. She shot him a glare, pushing his sunglasses up onto her head and nestling them into her hair.

“Yes, actually, now that you mention it,” Elliot replied tartly, “but not when I can’t see where I’m fucking going.”

“We’re only an hour and a half or so away from Joseph,” John insisted. “You really don’t think you can make it there?”

Elliot heaved a sigh. Her fingers fluttered over her forehead and the bridge of her nose like she had a headache that was a twin to his own, and every time he spoke, he was exacerbating it. That was probably true—and John was happier for it because the times when Elliot had been most compliant were when she was the most genuinely inhibited.

“I don’t like not being able to see who’s behind us or coming around the corner,” she insisted after a moment. “It doesn’t matter how close or far Joseph is. What matters is that there’s a group of nutjobs out there who apparently have insurmountable resources to take over a whole county in a single day, and I will _not_ —”

She stopped, as though to calm herself, and John waited; impatient, but silent.

“I will not,” Elliot finished, “get kidnapped by one more fucking cult, John Seed.”

Lightning crackled in the distance, and the rain pelted the windshield violently. Another rumble of thunder went spiraling above them; Boomer whined, his ears flat against his skull. John could see Elliot’s fingers gripping the steering wheel until they went bone-white, but each time her grip loosened to let the circulation back in through her fingers, they trembled.

“Fine,” John said. “Pull off into the trees up there, then. We’ll take a break and pick up again when the rain lets up.”

“Thank you,” Elliot said, pulling down from the side of the road and winding her way out of sight of any traffic that might be coming; no venom laced her voice, only relief, and there was no follow-up jab, either. Under the shelter of the trees, the rain felt less violent, and already John felt the tension fleeing his own shoulders.

As soon as Elliot turned the van off, the motor ticking absently, John rumbled, “I think that’s the nicest you’ve ever been to me, deputy.”

She got up out of the seat, shimmying her way past the console and into the back where Boomer had been enjoying the right, pulling hard enough to yank John’s arm and force him to shimmy back with her. The gesture was awkward, and he only complied because he didn’t want to be sitting in the front seat with their arms slung at the angle to allow her back there.

“It’s incredible what a little decency can get you,” she deadpanned. She opened the back door of the van to let Boomer out, the dog taking off happily into the brush. Stretching out her legs in the more spacious, empty back of the van, Elliot wiped some rain from her face and made herself comfortable. John settled against the wall of the car, absently pulling at the cuff still locked around his wrist.

“I can be plenty decent,” he replied, almost sly, a little grin ticking the corner of his mouth upward. “But you already knew that.”

Elliot groaned. “You’re still on about the fact that one time in a bar like, three years ago, you hit on me when I was drunk and you might have had a chance?”

“I think we both know there’s a little more to it than that.”

She rolled her eyes. She could not have, perhaps, been more dramatic than she was in that moment, although John reminded himself that he had often considered Elliot could not be more of _many_ things—impatient, infuriating, prone to violence—than she already was, and she had proved him wrong many times before.

“All I’m saying is,” John continued, “somewhere, deep down in that teeny-tiny heart of yours, deputy—”

“One time,” Elliot interrupted, holding up a finger to accentuate the number. “One time, many moons ago, I thought a man named John in a bar was objectively attractive. This was before I knew what your personality was like.”

John laughed. “You don’t need to like someone’s personality to _fuck_ them, deputy,” he said and basked in the way her expression scrunched up, as though a particularly sour flavor had just seeped into her mouth.

“I do,” Elliot replied, “and every day, I thank God that Joey Hudson had the good sense to keep me on the straight and narrow.”

“Amen.”

Her gaze flashed with something that might have been amusement. She coughed into her elbow, turning her face away from him to glance out the window at the trees, their branches and leaves swaying in the wind but becoming more and more still the deeper into the woods they went.

“So you think I’m attractive, then.”

“Please stop talking,” Elliot groaned, head lolling against the back of the driver’s seat. “John, if I tell you that I think you’re handsome when your mouth is closed, will you shut the fuck up?”

John’s mouth curved in a half-grin, his chest welling pleasantly at her words. It may have been more than a little petty, to like the words coming out of her mouth—Elliot Honeysett, who would probably strangle him to death with her bare hands if given the opportunity, admitting that he was _handsome._

“I might be more inclined,” he offered, sly. She rolled her eyes.

“I’m closing my eyes,” she announced, kicking her legs out and nudging his foot out of the way.

 _Absolutely childish,_ John thought absently and without much fervor, compliantly moving his foot out of the way for her. “Just use your words, deputy.”

“Certainly, anything for you,” Elliot purred. “I want you to shut up.”

He flashed her a grin, leaning his head back against the window. Rain pattered against the glass, and somewhere out in the distance, he heard Boomer’s happy bark as he did whatever it was that dogs did in the woods; hunt smaller things, perhaps.

“It’s nice to want things, isn’t it?”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

Elliot did not know how long she had been asleep when she finally woke up.

She knew that she had been allowed to sleep uninterrupted, which was the first red flag—there was no way that John would just let her sleep and sleep and let the day tick them by. As she slowly came to, through the corner of her eye she could see that he’d fallen asleep, too, shifting restlessly against the window.

The second thing she realized was that the rain hadn’t stopped, and the reason that she became immediately aware of it was that the back doors of the van were open. _She_ hadn’t done it, obviously, and she couldn’t fathom why in the world John would leave the back doors of the van open, so then the question in her foggy mind persisted; _who?_

And then someone grabbed her ankle and pulled.

The back of her head hit the metal floor of the van with a heavy _thud_ , the world spinning in her vision as she was pulled closer to the outside world, even as her legs kicked. Panic rose in her throat, violent and hot, and instantly her hand went to reach for John, his name spilling out of her mouth in a desperate attempt to wake him up.

His eyes fluttered open. Groggily, he said, “Elliot?” and as she was yanked violently down he got pulled, too, slammed forward face-first into the floor of the van, biting out a swear that only barely registered in her mind as she struggled to wake up.

She twisted to look at her attacker—a tall redhead with a nasty scar dragging his lip in a permanent sneer. Elliot recognized him as the same red-head that had been handling Faith for the woman from before, the same man who’d nearly rammed his van into hers on the road just a day ago.

His hand fisted in the front of her shirt; he drawled in his thick, round accent, “Go back to sleep, little one,” and slammed her head back against the floor with purpose, her vision going sticky, staticky black on the edges.

She felt the heavy pain blooming behind her eyes. The weight of it dragged her eyelids down; she swam in inky black, only vaguely aware of the sound of raised voices, the feeling of a damp cloth being draped over her mouth, the sensation of floating, as though she were drifting underwater with everyone else shouting above her; all of these things began to fade, slipping through her fingers like sand until there was nothing left except for the empty, hollow black filling her up.

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

“Elliot?”

It was John’s voice, she thought, or maybe not; it was hard to tell. Hands pressed to the tops of her shoulders, the pressure a welcoming comfort. Her chin was tucked against her chest, and she lifted her head—not without significant effort—and opened her eyes.

The world pulsed around her, colors bleeding brightly and violently against her irises. She was in a field—

_(I’m in a field? But the floor—)_

—and John was kneeling in front of her, his hands coming up to take her face. There was no smugness, no venom in his expression; only concern.

“I was so worried,” John said. “I was so worried about you, Elliot.”

“John,” Elliot said, and when she said his name it felt like the letters were spilling out of her mouth, choking her on the way out. A warm breeze tickled the edges of her vision, and the sunlight hemorrhaged into the grass, into the ground, oscillating in time with her heartbeat. A strange, sticky feeling wound up inside of her.

John said her name again. When she looked at him, his eye sockets were blooming, beautiful purple blooms pouring out of them, brushing his cheekbones like eyelashes. The feeling in her chest deepened; _grief,_ she thought, with desperation, _agony,_ hollowing her out, _dread_ , filling her back up again, nothing but a vessel for the deepest emotions to be carried in.

“I was so worried about you,” John said again. Soft petals tumbled out of his mouth when he spoke. He gripped the sides of her face and pressed their foreheads together, and she started to cry, shaking her head. “My Elliot,” he said, over the sound of her crying, his thumbs brushing the tears from her face, “my Elliot.”

She thought that her skin must be burning, from the inside out, everywhere his hands touched; sliding down her throat, along the slope of her collarbone, gripping her shoulders. Hungry, and burning, lighting her on fire as he murmured, _“My Elliot.”_

His hands skimmed her face. They felt different, then softer and more slender; she closed her eyes tightly, willing the horror of it to go away, for the clammy terror to slip off of her skin.

“Open your eyes, _mor._ Did the visions scare you? _”_ a soft voice asked, the words slinking across her skin, serpentine and cold. She did as she was told, even when she thought, _I don’t want to open my eyes,_ her body operating obediently.

Soft, dark eyes. Wisps of dirty-blonde hair that curtained Elliot’s face. Her head was in the woman’s lap and the night sky stretched, cloudy and endless, above them. Ase smiled at her dreamily.

“I saw your color the minute I laid eyes on you,” Ase whispered. She said the words like they were meant to be treasured, kept between them, only them. Elliot’s eyes fluttered and she tried to will herself to move. Her body was non-compliant, heavy as lead, and the warmth of a tear moving haltingly down her cheek made her skin prickle.

With the touch of a doting mother, Ase wiped the tear from her cheek, the pad of her thumb sliding along the slope of Elliot’s cheekbone, and then brushed the hair from her face. Now, Elliot could see more clearly the way her pupils were blown wide, swallowing up the color of her irises, crushing it in the event horizon of her eyes. She murmured, reverently, “I saw your color, _mor,_ I saw _you._ Have you ever felt seen? We waited for you, for so long.”

Elliot moaned, misery stinging in the sound. Her lip trembled. She thought, _I don’t want to be seen,_ the way Ase reiterated it making her vulnerable. _I don’t want to be seen, I don’t want this._ But she couldn’t make the words come out, her jaw hanging slack when she opened her mouth, the knowledge that they had done _something_ to her flickering only briefly through her mind before it was swallowed up by something else.

“I’ll let you go.” Ase’s voice remained silken, spinning around her, weaving a cocoon. “I’ll let you go, _mor_ , but only because I know that you will always come back to us.” She skimmed her fingers lovingly across Elliot’s forehead and whispered into her skin, _“Now go back to sleep.”_

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

John found her curled up, her fingers sinking into the earth like she was afraid she was going to float away, and sobbing.

His head was pounding; he felt disoriented, and panicked, the same kind of strange, distant panic that happened when he fell asleep during the day and woke up to it being night. He could only remember the sound of Elliot saying his name jerking him out of his sleep in the van, the sensation of getting pulled forward violently, and the feeling of someone slamming his head into the side of the van.

And then, waking up in a field, in the dark, alone.

He had struggled to his feet when he awoke. He had thought, _the handcuffs are off_ . He had thought, _I have to find Elliot._ And then he’d started walking, saying her name, until he heard the sound of her crying and found her.

“Elliot,” he said urgently. His mouth felt incredibly dry; he was worried that if he spoke too much, his skin would split. He reached for her when she turned to look at him, and when she saw him she _moaned,_ the sound that came out of her the same kind of sound an animal with its leg caught in a trap would make.

A slur of protests came out of her. A line of _no’s_ that all blurred together, but when brought her to a sitting position she only shrunk away from him a little. He took the sides of her face in his hands and searched her for any sign of wounds or harm that might have come to her: but there was nothing. She was, it appeared, physically untouched.

“Hey,” John managed out. “It’s me, Elliot. I’ve got you.”

She blinked blearily at him. Her face was flushed, puffy, and tears dotted and darkened her lower lashes. Her pupils nearly ate up the entirety of those baby blues; clearly, she’d been drugged. She said, “John?” and he nodded.

“Yes, Rook. It’s me.”

“They did something to me,” Elliot said, her voice rising in her distress. “John—”

“They’re gone,” he said, without confirming her fears. “We have to move, though. Can you stand?”

The blonde hesitated for a moment and then nodded—he supposed she would have to fight through the remains of whatever they had put in her. He stood, taking her hands and helping her as she wobbled to a stand as well. It was hard to figure out exactly where they were, with no road in sight, but the haze of his sleep—which he now thought must _also_ be medically induced—was still weighing on him.

“We have to move,” he said again, Elliot’s fingers clutching his hands so tight it almost hurt. He scanned the horizon of the field, touching on the dip of a hill, a river, and then a treeline. His eyes strained. He thought he might have seen headlights through the dim of them, but it was hard to tell.

It was also all he had to go on.

“Come on,” John said, her hands still locked around his like he was anchoring her to the earth. Unable to guess what they’d drugged her with, he imagined it probably felt like that.

“John,” Elliot said, her voice impossibly small as they began to walk, her steps halting and uneasy, “They did something to me.”

His jaw tightened. He hated this; he hated Elliot like this, emotionally wounded and voice wobbling, because all of a sudden he thought that this was not the Elliot he knew, not his Elliot at all. Where was the venom? The steel? Where had she gone?

Buried, he supposed, under psychotropic drugs, of which he knew not the origin nor the duration.

The rain clouds had moved along; the earth smelled wet, and fresh, the scent of it welling up inside of them, and as they walked his mind felt clearer and clearer. With clarity came the knowledge that they had been trapped; the cultists had _had_ them, and had chosen to leave them alive. For what?

“I know,” John said again, his voice rough with his forcefully-induced sleep. Elliot’s fingers dug into his arm where they clutched, the feverish pitch of her body heat seeping through his clothes from how close she lingered. “You’re fine, deputy, I’ve got you.”

He tried not to think too hard about the voice that echoed in his head, _for now._


	7. anything that touches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a nice lil family reunion, and everyone's having a really good time and definitely there is not one person who really wants to kill all of the other people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a blast to write, mostly because I got to revisit that ICONIC scene (iykyk). That's pretty much the last in-canon thing we're going to have; the dialogue is essentially the same, but it felt important for me to have Elliot's experience of what it was like, when she was still soft and new.
> 
> There's like... Some Joseph/Deputy? If you squint really hard and take Joseph's weird obsession with the deputy that way? They definitely want the other one dead, though. Other than that, no warnings for this chapter other than Elliot having a minor mental breakdown and (briefly) disassociating from her body. Just stress things haha!
> 
> Y'all the HOPELESS romantic in me is SUFFERING through these two but. I swear!! I swear. I SWEAR. Also anyone who tells me John doesn't want a partner who can put his ass in the dirt can fight me in hand to hand combat, because home boy needs it.
> 
> I hope you enjoy! As always, thank you to my gorgeous, talented, incredible [Starcrier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrier/pseuds/Starcrier) for proof-reading and for agreeing to marry Elliot because John never will. She is a remarkable writer, so please check out her stuff if you want to see a REAL slow burn happening. Of course, you can still find me on tumblr @ proudspires, full of shenanigans, and I am always happy to chat and just as awkward as you might think, so don't hesitate to come and say hi!

John had never felt dread like this.

It was strange, the way it crept upon him as they walked to the trees. It was dark out, but the clouds had cleared so the moon and stars above were perfectly visible; it wasn’t as though he couldn’t _see,_ and the closer they got to the trees, the more assured John felt that the van was there, or had _been_ there. He supposed he didn’t know if the cultists had made off with it or not.

No, he wasn’t feeling dread about the fact that they were on foot, or that Boomer was nowhere to be seen, or that it was dark, or that he didn’t know for absolute certain that he was going in the right direction.

He felt dread because they were alive: because they were free, because there was no cultist in sight. He felt dread because Elliot was clutching his hand in hers, and her other hand was gripping his forearm, and she no longer moved with the surety of the apex predator she had made herself out to be in a very short period of time. Her feet hit the ground with heavy, unsteady thuds, their progression through the field and to the trees painfully halting. He had a very vivid memory of Elliot telling him, _I’d rather you let me eat shit_ when he’d tried to steady her from falling, just a few days ago.

She wouldn’t look at him, either. Not directly in the eyes. He didn’t know if this was another side-effect of whatever they’d laced her with, or if it was Elliot, or if it had anything to do with the way she’d tried to pull away from him when he’d first found her in the field.

“Elliot,” John said, trying not to sound frustrated as her nails dug into his arm, “loosen your grip a little.”

Her lashes fluttered. She said, “Okay,” but then nothing changed, even though she looked like she was trying, as though the faculties with which she normally operated were so severely hindered that she wasn’t even aware if her body was doing the things she was willing it to.

He didn’t bring it up again. Even when he thought certainly her grip was going to bruise, even when his arm began to ache.

By the time they got to the trees, the moon was high in the sky, and John’s legs burned with the effort of merely walking. That was all it had been, _walking,_ but the longer he turned it over in his mind that they were headed into a trap, the more laborious the movements became. They waded through the trees, the moonlight only barely filtering through now, until he saw it: the van.

At first, he felt relief. And then, immediately after, crashing into any good mood he might have left, was the paranoia. _Why did they leave it?_ he wondered, hesitating. _A trap. They want us to get back into the van._

But if they were trying to trap them, why wouldn’t they have just... kept them?

“John.” Elliot’s voice dragged with exhaustion. When he looked at her, her cheeks were flushed with fever, and her pupils were still huge—but not as much as before. “I’m so… tired.” Her body swayed a little, her eyes struggling to stay open; she was crashing, hard and fast.

“Stay here.”

Carefully, John pried his arm out of her grip, sitting her down in the nook of a tree’s roots before creeping his way over to the van. It was empty, and open, as though the cultists had just taken them and left it as it was. He wasn’t about to get caught a second time, so he moved quickly—climbed into the back, grabbed the backpack Elliot had filled with food and Tylenol, and reached for where he thought the guns were.

“Fuck,” John said. Gone. Everything else was left, except for the guns. And his glasses. _Fuckheads._

He stuffed the pack of cigarettes and the lighter into the backpack before he slid out of the back of the van and made his way back to Elliot. Her face was buried in her knees, her fingers absently curling and uncurling, something that John knew was just an Elliot thing—he’d seen it when she was at her most stressed, when she was trying hard to stay _rooted._

John reached out and touched her shoulder. Even though he’d been clambering through the brush, the gesture startled her, her head jerking up and her eyes looking at him for just a second before diverting.

“We can’t stay,” he said urgently. “Come on.”

She nodded numbly before she took his offered hand, hoisting herself to her feet and trailing after him past the van and out closer to the roadside. He thought, briefly, about yelling for the dog, or trying to whistle the way Elliot did, but the idea of making a violent range of noise to fetch a beast from somewhere deep in the woods—if he even _was_ there—did not sit right with him. So instead, he found them a spot that was still within the trees, but pressed into the slope that led up to the road, and sat Elliot down again.

Now that _he_ had a moment to sit, a moment to think, his brain flipped a switch into a necessary, self-preservation panic. Just a little adrenaline, to keep him awake, surely; because he didn’t want to be sleeping any time soon.

John couldn’t push the image of Elliot, pressed against the earth, _crying_ , out of his mind. What had she seen? What did they do? His mouth burned with the itch to ask, but he couldn’t bring himself to, not when her eyes couldn’t stay on one place for more than a second.

“They didn’t—they didn’t do it to you?” Elliot asked him, after she took the Tylenol he gave her dry and picked a chocolate chip out of a granola bar. John turned his gaze to her, cocking his head to the side. She still carried with her that dreamer’s sway, that soft loopy tone to her voice that reminded him she wasn’t yet quite herself again, but he thought it sounded like she was clearing up. Hopefully.

“Do what to me, deputy?”

She blinked down at her hands. “Drug you.”

He hesitated. He’d certainly gotten _something_ , though he didn’t think it was anything like what they’d given Elliot. “Not the same,” he said after a second. “But I was asleep, for a while. For hours. I don’t know how long.”

“I wish I had been sleeping.” Elliot’s voice was miserable. She had never been so small, he thought, than in that moment, and she tipped her body over until the side of her face was on the ground. And then, after her eyes had drifted shut and a lapse of silence had passed, she mumbled, “They probably thought I was a bigger threat than you.”

John fought the urge to smile. It only barely worked, and he was glad, because he didn’t need Elliot getting a bigger ego than she already had.

“Yes, Rook, you’re very scary and intimidating. All—what, four feet, eight inches of you?”

“I’m five foot four, you fuckhead.”

A wave of relief washed over him. He rested his head back against the tree, exhaling softly.

“Go to sleep, deputy,” he murmured, “so you can go back to being the bigger threat.”

_For the sake of both of us._

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

For the first time in what felt like years, Elliot slept.

It was fitful sleep, to be sure, plagued by a strange, blurring color-scape of nightmares and fever-dreams that haunted the corner of her sleeping vision. It all just lurked around the edges, never an image that she could pin down or find, only ever something that was present enough to fill her with a persistent terror. Voice melded into each other, overlapping; fragments of noise and color drifted in and out of her, like a tree shedding petals in a fiercer wind.

When she woke, light was just beginning to try and creep over the distant mountains. It wasn’t enough to feel like a real morning, like the _day time_ , but enough that the milky glow of it filtered through the tops of the trees; the earth smelled wet and fresh, and her clothes were a little damp from sleeping on the wet ground. The sky stretched, gray and soft as wedding silk, through the tops of the trees. She wiped the water from her face.

 _I smell: the earth, the rain, the grass and wind. I see: the light, the sky, the tops of the tress. I feel_ _—_

“Ah, sleeping beauty awakens,” John said. His voice sounded gravelly; maybe he hadn’t slept at all, this whole time, which somehow made her stomach twist a little even though she didn’t want to care about what John did or didn’t get to do.

“Fuck off.” She groaned, coming into a sitting position and feeling her head immediately swoon with the effort. The back of it pulsed with a splitting pain, and she remembered the red-haired man from before, telling her to go back to sleep just before he slammed her head into the floor of the van. “God—what the _fuck_ —”

“It’s so lovely,” John intoned, and she got the impression maybe it wasn’t lovely at all, “to have you back at full capacity again, deputy.”

Elliot pressed the heel of her palm to her head. “That asshole that works for Ase smashed my head in before he drugged me.”

John’s eyes narrowed. “Let me see.”

She stilled and closed her eyes against the splintering pain at the back of her head; she heard John shift where he was sitting, and then his hands against hers, brushing them away from the back of her head. Elliot tried not to think too much about how warm his hands were, how comforting the calloused feel of them was, or how _gentle_ they were when he combed the hair out of his way. He clicked his tongue a little, hands dropping from her hair, and suddenly Elliot’s stomach plummeted, too; the loss of contact sent her poor little drug-addled lizard brain reeling.

“Well, you’ve got a nasty cut,” John said after a moment, “which is mostly scabbed over. And a bump that will probably be the size of an egg by the time it’s done.” His voice slid her out of her strange little panic, her desire to grab his hands and put them back on her face, even when that exact nightmare she’d had was stopping her from being able to meet his eyes for very long.

Elliot swallowed thickly. “Goody.”

She thought she could hear a smile in his voice when he said, “I’m sure you’ve had worse, Rook.”

“Don’t call me that.” She tried to force more heat in her voice, but she was so _tired_ ; it felt like she hadn’t slept at all. John made a mild noise that might have been amusement, and then shifted where he sat before coming to a stand and stretching. Elliot asked, “Did you sleep?” and then immediately kicked herself ( _because why would she care_ ), but it was too late to take the words back.

Her gaze flickered to John’s face and then immediately away. The strange dream—nightmare?—that she’d had of him, cradling her face, his touch searing through her, _my Elliot_ , lingered on her skin still, heavy like a cinder block tying her down. It made it hard to look him in the eyes; she was afraid she’d see the flowers again.

“No,” he replied, and if it bothered him that she wasn’t looking at him very much, his voice didn’t sound like it. “Someone had to make sure those crazies didn’t come back.”

She scoffed, struggling to her feet. “The term _crazies_ coming out of _your mouth_ is impeccably comedic.”

“I’ll be here all night.”

Elliot shouldered the backpack and glanced around. The forest was quiet, and there was no sight nor sound of Boomer anywhere. She could only hope that he’d been out and away from the van when everything happened and that he’d had the good sense to stay hidden. He was a smart boy. She tried not to worry too much.

At least, she would keep telling herself that, until proven otherwise. But she wouldn’t be whistling for him anytime soon—not with how easily they’d been tracked down by Ase and her fuckhead assistant.

“I suppose we should go on foot from here,” she said, a little mournfully, regretting the reasonable nature of her statement. She saw John grimace out of the corner of her eye.

“I suppose so, deputy.”

She heaved a sigh, fingers fluttering over the cut on the back of her head absently before she nodded. Her clothes were wet, she was nursing a raging hangover from whatever the fuck she’d been drugged with, and she’d eaten half a granola bar in a little over twenty-four hours. And if the drag of her breaths in her chest—even when she was taking a normal inhale—were any indication, sleeping in wet clothes had done nothing to improve her sickness.

Elliot set off, marching through the underbrush to get out of the woods and closer to the road. They passed the van again on their way out, and she thought, _fuck, I’d kill John to get one more cigarette out of there,_ but she knew she shouldn’t. They probably had some kind of—bomb, or tracking device, or—

But in her heart of hearts, she knew that wasn’t true. They didn’t utilize machinery the same way that Eden’s Gate did. And if they _wanted_ her and John dead, well. They would have killed them already. So even though she knew this, and thought it to herself, she couldn’t bring herself to go back to the car.

 _I see your color, mor,_ Ase had said, her voice like a thousand whispers against her skin. Elliot’s throat felt tight. She turned to John suddenly and said, “Hey, do you speak Swedish?”

John brushed past her. “What do you think?”

“How are you so unhelpful, and all of the time? Don’t you get tired of being useless?”

He laughed, and Elliot felt a little spark of indignation light in her chest. All of John’s strange tenderness—and she hadn’t forgotten, even if it was fuzzy, the way he’d held her face and said _it’s me, Elliot,_ like he was supposed to be a comfort to her—

(and he was, now, what a _sick thought,_ )

—was gone, and instead, she kept thinking about the stupid fucking expression on his face when he’d said, _so you think I’m attractive, then_ , because there was nothing more irritating than John Seed knowing he was attractive. It wasn’t like he needed _her_ to tell him, so why he’d tried to wriggle the words out of her was beyond her comprehension; although Elliot supposed it could be explained that John hadn’t had anyone chant yes at his face for perhaps twenty-four hours, so how was he still sustaining himself? He must be craving attention, starved for it.

“You are the most annoying fucking person I’ve ever met,” Elliot announced, so that she could abruptly shove any and all thoughts of John’s hands on her face out of her head, huffing a little as she worked to catch up with him.

And then John turned around so suddenly that she careened straight into his chest, his hands landing to steady her shoulders—( _warm,_ she thought absently)—and he said, “I know,” with all of the arrogance that she knew him to have. “Give me the backpack, deputy. If they _are_ tracking us in some sick game of hide and seek, they’re going to hear you huffing and puffing from fifteen miles away.”

Elliot mustered all of the spite she had in her—which was not as much as she would have liked—and said, “I hate you, John Seed.”

“You’re going to have to find a new slogan,” John rumbled, sliding the backpack straps off of her shoulders, “because that one just doesn’t ring very true anymore.”

She let him take the backpack; not because she liked that he was being helpful, but because her shoulders screamed in relief. The more and more sober she became, the more her muscles ached, like she had been involuntarily tensing all night, and now they _burned_. John might as well have punched her entire body over and over again, with his stupid rings.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she replied, fishing the Tylenol out of the bag and swallowing two. John rolled his eyes.

“Look, I can tell when you’re lying to me,” he said. “And I know that I’m irresistible, not only because I saved you—”

“Do _not_ —”

“—but because, as a man of God, I am infinitely wiser than you, as well. If there is one thing that I would know about a woman of wrath, Deputy Honeysett, it’s that the one thing she wants is to feel _in control_ of herself, and I’m exactly the man who can give you control.”

Elliot could have, perhaps, not picked a less-Godly man than John Seed; the only exception would be one of his brothers. His words rattled around in her skull. Was this the stupid shit he told himself? That he could _give her control?_ Here, in the woods—soaking wet, sick, split open, walking for God knows how long on foot—and _that’s_ the sales pitch he was going with?

Her jaw clenched, blistering the headache behind her eyes under an impossible heatwave of pure _ache_ , and she pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re—fucking—”

John waited, patiently, much to her fury: but the words would not come to her, color fractals splintering even when her eyes were closed, driving frenzied neurons to fire off pain signals over and over again. When she opened her eyes, for a second, an aura stretched across her vision, like someone pulling saran-wrap tight right over her face. She thought she might puke.

“I’m fucking...?” John prompted, and when she only shuddered a breath, his tone shifted a little. She couldn’t tell _what to_ , but his voice was different when he said, “Deputy?”

He sounded, quite suddenly, like he was very far away from her. She tried to open her eyes again. The world wobbled unpleasantly, and the ground stretched beneath her until it felt like she was on a moving conveyor belt. She saw _herself_ , standing there numbly, heels of her palms pressed against her eye sockets in a desperate attempt to quell the migraine.

“Elliot.”

John’s hands came to her face, yanking her back into a painful reality. He was _too_ close now, smelling like wet earth and forest and a little bit like sweat, the rough, warm palms of his hands holding grounding her back to reality. He said, “Earth to Elliot.”

“Yes,” Elliot managed out. She couldn’t muster up any vitriol; one of her hands gripped John’s wrist where it cut through her peripheral. “I’m here,” she added, and she didn’t know why she said it like _that_ , like she’d been somewhere else—maybe because she had. “Just—this head wound is really fucking with me. We have to get moving, and—”

She heard, a few feet away from them, the sound of a car door slamming. Her brain immediately jumpstarted; first, she thought, _oh those fucking Swedes,_ and then her brain tried to say, _or maybe it’s Jerome, or Grace, or_ —

It was neither of them. Through the haze of pain, Elliot heard the sound of Eden’s Gate’s radio playing, the sound of boots hitting the pavement.

“Well,” Joseph sighed, “if it isn’t the lamb and her shepherd.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

Joseph Seed is a particularly difficult man to pin down.

She never meets him once, either before she goes off to the Academy or after, and she’s glad for it. After she gets back to Hope County, after she gets cleared by the psychiatrist, after she gets back to life-on-normal, she thinks she’d be happy to never see Joseph Seed. Not because she isn’t religious, but because she doesn’t like _his brand,_ because the doomsday-ing and the wriggling past legalities of owning land or, perhaps, even _people_ make her skin crawl.

Elliot doesn’t think she’d ever be able to walk herself into his compound. She doesn’t think she’d ever be able to look Joseph Seed in the eye, but she doesn’t have a _choice_ , the helicopter planting them squarely in the compound. 

The ground is wet, fresh from recent rain, and slips underfoot. The night is clouded above with no stars in sight. She feels almost like she’s in a dream, Joey walking ahead of her as the U.S. Marshal bickers with Sheriff Whitehorse, back and forth. She’s barely listening. She feels eyes on them, _burning,_ angry and defiant shouts coming from the onlooking Eden’s Gate members, and she hears the sound of dogs barking in the distance.

They get to the church. Inside, the congregation is singing _Amazing Grace,_ and the crickets match its feverish pitch, sliding along her skin.

“Hudson, on the door and watch our backs,” Whitehorse says, when the Marshal— _Burke_ , Elliot thinks absently, _that was his name_ —acquiesces to doing things the way Whitehorse wants to do it. “Don’t let any of these people get in. Rookie, on me.”

Elliot nods, her gaze focusing sharp again. Whitehorse has taken a risk, bringing her out when she was still so green; she wasn’t going to let him down. 

Not that he has much choice. They’re short-staffed as it was anyway.

“And you—” Whitehorse looks at Burke, his expression faltering, _tired._ “Just… Try not to do anything stupid.”

Burke claps him on the shoulder. He is all easy confidence, surety of foot, the kind of confidence Elliot wants to have someday. She hopes she doesn’t become tired, like Whitehorse. “Relax, Sheriff,” Burke says, “you’re about to get your name in the paper.”

But Elliot isn’t paying attention to them. She’s thinking about the armed men and women skulking around, and the dogs barking in the distance, and the sound of the singing from the inside of the church.

Joey’s hand briefly touches her shoulder. Her dark gaze is soft, and she squeezes Elliot’s shoulder before she says, “You’ll be fine.”

Whitehorse doesn’t look pleased by Burke’s comment. He doesn’t even look assuaged, mildly. He pushes the door open, and Elliot sticks close to his heel, as the singing comes to an abrupt stop; the church is dimly lit, with most of the light coming from behind the man at the front, his silhouette carved obsidian so that his features are obscured to her.

They walk slow. The man says, “ _Something_ is coming. You can feel it, can’t you?”

His voice is a rich-willow timbre, decadent. The gathering of the cultists turn, their eyes piercing into the trio. Elliot’s heart is slamming against her rib cage. She doesn’t have a gun pulled—would never, not without Whitehorse’s blessing—but she _wants_ to, not to fire but to warn. To keep them away.

“We are creeping toward the edge, and there _will_ be a reckoning. That is why we started the Project—”

They’re dirty, and bedraggled. Elliot’s throat tightens. Why would they choose this? Why would they want to be like this?

“—because we _know_ what happens next. They will come. They will try to take from us—take our guns, take our freedom, take our faith.”

Burke looks back at her, his hand floating and tense, ready to pull his gun at any moment. But he beckons her with a crook of his fingers and she does as he bids. Closer now, Elliot can see that the man is not alone; to the left, a tall, rugged red-head, his arms crossed, his expression stony. To the right, a soft young woman, dressed in white, dreamy. And just behind Joseph, a handsome, dark-haired man; a man that Elliot recognizes as John _Duncan,_ but now is told by Joey is John _Seed_.

Joseph’s shirtless, which should be ridiculous and comedic but only serves to make him look both polished and feral in equal amounts. Golden light from outside drenches through a window cut to be the same shape as the emblem of Eden’s Gate, and it _bathes_ him; he is golden, soft and sharp all at the same time.

“Sheriff, c’mon,” Burke says, because he is not charmed; he, too, thinks it is ridiculous. Whitehorse holds up a hand to steady him. 

“We will not let them.” Joseph Seed’s voice flexes, furious and controlled. “We will not let their _greed_ , or their immorality or their depravity hurt us anymore. There will be no more suffering.”

Burke is furious that the _sermon_ —if it can be called that, which Elliot would argue that it cannot, knowing the Seeds—has continued this long. She hears him say, “No, fuck this,” and he pulls the paper out and holds up in front of the man’s face.

“Joseph Seed,” Burke bites out, “I have a warrant issued for your arrest, on the suspicion of kidnapping with the intent to harm. Now, I want you to step forward and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Elliot’s gaze flickers. She feels sick to her stomach. Joseph lifts his hands; he is soft, again, no longer fervent, no longer yelling, and his gaze fixes on her.

“There they are,” he says, his voice quiet. “The locusts in our garden.”

Members of Eden’s Gate—armed, ragged, _feral_ —slide their way between them and Joseph.

“You see, they’ve come for me.” Other members are beginning to get angry. They’re yelling, now, as Joseph says, “They’ve come to take me away from _you_ , they’ve come to destroy all that we have built,” and the voices raise in volume, and Burke puts his hand on his gun and Whitehorse yells for him to stand down and Elliot’s fingers itch and she thinks, _oh, no, this is when I’m going to have to shoot someone._

But Joseph steps down from his platform. His hands brush the shoulders of his supporters, and they part for him, quieting the crowd, quelling their noise. Behind him, John steps across the stage, his eyes narrowed and sharp, studying them; he moves like an animal, _prowling._

“We knew this moment would come. We’ve prepared for it,” Joseph says, gentle. He ushers them away; they brush past Elliot, her head turning after them, thinking certainly one will grab her, choke her, _kill_ her, but they don’t.

“— _and I saw,_ ” Joseph is biting out, pointing at Burke, and then looking at the sheriff, “ _and behold, it was a white horse._ ” 

And then Joseph is looking at her. He lifts his hands to her. His eyes are fixed on her, and she feels a strange, uncanny thrill slide through her. Joseph looks at her like she is the only person in the room, like all others have blinked out of existence and it’s only them. 

_That’s why,_ she thinks, the feeling of it making her heart ache a little. _That’s why they choose to be this way. To belong to someone._

She knows that’s what it is. She knows that’s how he’s gotten these people to follow him: because he looks at them like this, _with longing,_ like there is nothing in the world that he wants more than to take them into his embrace.

His voice is breathless, soft, _covetous,_ jealously cradling her in velvet swathes: “ _And Hell followed with him.”_

Elliot feels frozen. Petrified. Her stomach churns. She can feel the eyes of the Seed siblings on her. Burke jerks his hand at her, breaking her out of her reverie.

“Rookie, cuff this son of a bitch.”

Joseph is holding out his hands, obedient and compliant. “God will not let you take me.”

Burke says it again, maybe different, she can’t remember because the blood is rushing through her head, so she does as he asks. Her hands might be trembling. She takes Joseph’s hands and slides the cuffs on them, and he leans into her like he’s going to breathe her in or swallow her whole and almost _purrs_ —

_“Sometimes, the best thing to do is to walk away.”_

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

John’s hands slid from Elliot’s face. The first thing he felt when he saw Joseph was _relief_ —sheer, pure relief, that it wasn’t the Resistance that had found them and that it wasn’t Ase and her man again, but that it was _his brother._ Over his shoulder, too, John could see Jacob in the driver’s seat of the truck, his face stony and hard as always.

The second thing that John felt was dread.

Joseph’s expression was unreadable. It almost always was, he supposed, but now the fact that he couldn’t tell what Joseph was thinking struck a hot cord of fear inside of him, because he was reminded—now and painfully—that Faith was still lost to them.

“Joseph,” John managed out, his hands drifting now from Elliot completely, where before they had slid to her shoulders. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“You could sound like it,” Elliot muttered, and he shot her a look before he turned back to his brother, immediately crossing the gap from him to Joseph, standing on the road. Joseph watched him steadily, and once he was within arm’s reach, John stopped, hesitating.

“We were on our way to you,” Joseph explained, his voice steady, a soothing balm to John’s frayed nerves. “We heard talk on the radios that our sister had been taken, but we didn’t get a response when we tried to contact you at the ranch.”

John nodded. “Yes, it’s—there’s so much to tell you—”

Joseph’s hands came to rest on his shoulders for a moment; and, much the same way that John had done to Elliot, Joseph took his face in his hands.

“We’re so glad you’re alive,” Joseph murmured, his expression softening _just that much_. John felt the relief flood his system immediately at the gentle contact—merciful, healing, the way Joseph liked to be. “And that our dear deputy is still with you. Compliantly, too, it seems.”

Elliot’s voice was hard as flint when she said, “Yeah, well, you missed the last twenty-four hours where this fucking idiot had us cuffed together.”

Behind the yellow lenses of his glasses, Joseph’s gaze flickered to wherever Elliot lingered behind John, over his shoulders. His brother stared at Elliot for a moment; there was something in the way Joseph locked his gaze on the blonde that made John’s stomach twist uncomfortably, and he couldn’t quite pin it down, either, couldn’t get it to stop squirming long enough for him to figure out what it was.

“And yet,” Joseph said after a moment, his voice a low drawl as his hands dropped from John, “you are here, unburdened.”

John turned to look at Elliot. She still had to be in pain; she might have been trying to hide it, because of Joseph, or maybe even still because of _him_ , but he could see it on her face, in the way her fingers curled and uncurled themselves absently, digging her nails into her palms. But this little give-away of hers meant nothing to anyone else, because the lines of her face were sharp and unrelenting.

Elliot’s gaze did not once leave Joseph. John recognized on her face that same odd, cold calculation she’d had when she’d thought about choking that Eden’s Gate guard out. If there was, he supposed, one person that Elliot hated more than himself, it was Joseph; perhaps she was thinking about all of the ways she wanted to kill _him_ , now.

“Well, coincidentally, we were on _our_ way to _you_ , Joseph. There’s now a problem one size bigger than your little cult.” Elliot said, her shoulders relaxing. She crested the hill up to the road, her feet hitting the pavement with more surety than she’d had since she’d woken up. It was like seeing someone that she hated had poured adrenaline straight into her body, and now she moved with the same precision she always did—though if the weariness in her expression was any indication, she was only half capacity. “How _lucky_.”

Joseph gazed at Elliot, as though John didn’t exist—as though no-one and nothing _else_ existed, in that moment, except for her. John’s stomach lurched again, _once more, with feeling!_ a wicked voice shouted in his brain, rattling around, keeping him nice and distracted so that he couldn’t figure out quite what it was that it made him feel.

“Fated,” Joseph agreed. His voice was almost sly. “One could say.”

“One could,” Elliot shot back, “but one _shouldn’t,_ if they don’t want to sound like an idiot.” The words shot a jolt of fearful anticipation through John—not only because he thought, _Joseph is only so merciful_ , but because he was sure that it reflected back on _him,_ the way she felt so comfortable insulting Joseph.

“Deputy,” John snapped, and she glared at him, her brows knitting together at the center of her forehead. Joseph smiled pleasantly.

“Mouthy,” Jacob said from the truck, his voice clipped, “for someone who wants our help.”

Elliot bit out venomously, “Fuck you,” just as John said, “ _Elliot_ ,” their voices overlapping furiously, and she looked at him again. There was something accusatory in her gaze. John wanted to pluck it out of her, break it apart so he could figure it out: but there wasn’t any time for that now. 

Her hands curled into fists at her sides, like she was going to fight Jacob right then and there, and John wasn’t entirely sure that she _wouldn’t,_ pushed enough. He turned back to his brothers and said, “She’s agreed to help and get Faith back.”

“Not for nothing.” Elliot’s add-in was sharp. “I get to use the radios to contact the resistance and tell them to get the fuck out of Dodge.”

Joseph’s gaze fluttered between them, just for a moment—landing on Elliot for a heartbeat longer than it did on John—and then he stepped back, gesturing for them to get into the back seat of the truck. The blonde stepped on without John, brushing past him and flinging the door of the truck open before hoisting herself inside.

“How much do you know?” John asked as he climbed in after Elliot, shoving the backpack behind one of the seats. He tried not to think about the way Elliot’s eyes stayed pinned on Joseph, or the way her body had gone rigid, like at any moment she was ready to throw her fists in the direction of the nearest Seed brother—and certainly now, she had her pick if that were the case.

“Enough,” Joseph replied. He closed the passenger seat door and Jacob pulled the steering wheel of the truck until it was turning around. “But I’m certain you’ll be of more help.”

John opened his mouth to elaborate and give what information he had at the top of his brain when Elliot said, abruptly and without pretense, “You’ve come so unguarded, Joseph. Doesn’t that make you nervous?” and John turned his head to stare at her in disbelief.

 _Fucking insane,_ he thought. _She wants to die. Does she ever stop?_

But Joseph only laughed. Through the rearview mirror, John saw his eyes make contact with Elliot’s, and he said, “Jacob is sufficient protection on his own.” He paused, something slick and cool in his voice when he added, “But your concern is _touching_.”

“That’s an interesting choice of word. Not what I would have picked, though.”

“When we heard the radio chatter,” Jacob interrupted, before John could will himself to tell Elliot to shut the fuck up while he was still within hitting range, “Joseph told everyone to hunker down while we identified the threat. For once, it wasn’t a little girl playing with a shotgun.”

The accusation lay there, unspoken: Jacob had made it clear many times that he was certain he could snuff Elliot out faster than anyone else, either deeming her useless or shaping her into the perfect killer. If Joseph would just _let_ him, he’d said, he would see.

But Joseph had told him to wait. To let John—persuasion was his specialty. _Let John show us._

And John didn’t miss the way that his brother said it; _Joseph told everyone._ An opinion had been overruled, and it wasn’t Joseph’s, and Jacob hadn’t forgotten.

Elliot’s mouth opened, rearing up to say something; the indignation had been lit in her gaze, furious. He would have been comforted that she was back to normal—no longer trembling, no longer somewhere far away from him—but he knew that _Jacob_ had much less tolerant than Joseph did.

“I grabbed the cigarettes from the van,” John said tartly, before she could get going. “Smoke one.”

The unspoken words lingered. _Chill the fuck out._ _Occupy your mouth with something else._ Something that John didn’t think he’d say to her, out loud, unless he was feeling particularly confident that she wouldn’t strangle him to death in front of his brothers.

“Good thinking, _honey_ ,” Elliot drawled. His eyes narrowed at her. She stuffed her hand into the backpack, searching until she found them. The blonde only looked mildly surprised through her rage that they were actually there. 

When she rolled down the window and lit it, John relaxed a little and continued, “We’ve had a run-in with their leader. They’re armed and organized.”

Elliot stayed quiet. She settled back against the seat, deep into the corner of it, closest to the window, as though she couldn’t stand how close to them all she was, and took a long drag of the cigarette. The orange end of it burned until it was a sunspot in his vision.

John’s gaze drifted over her for a moment. Still, she wouldn’t look at him; she only spared him furtive glances through the corner of her eye, but never met his gaze, never going farther than his mouth.

“Ah.” Joseph’s gaze remained fixed on the road, his voice interrupting John’s thoughts. “So there’s now one more breed of locusts in our garden, it seems. Easy enough to exterminate, I think.”

“And how, pray tell,” Elliot asked, her voice sly, “do you plan to get rid of a new breed when you can’t even get rid of the old one?”

Jacob’s fingers tightened and flexed on the steering wheel. John could see a small smile tick the corner of Joseph’s mouth.

“If you get one flat foot on the devil’s wing,” Joseph replied, “you can get him to do just about anything you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joseph absolutely stole that line from Rob Zombie and will never, ever admit it.


	8. the space between us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr Elliot pops off like 6 times and honestly who's surprised at this point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is like, nearly 2k longer than most others and folks, we got it all: identity crisis, PTSD symptoms, the irritability of being surrounded by Seed brothers, the irritability of perhaps not having eaten or had any real water for like two days, Jacob being a shithead, the "sees love interest in x state of undress" trope, YOU NAME IT. When does the fun stop?? We'll never know.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy, it feels a bit like this chapter got away from me and not a lot of exciting stuff happens but it did feel important to have this lull of a chapter between all the action and drama. Thank you, as always, to my angel [Starcrier,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrier/pseuds/Starcrier) the best proof-reader a girl could ask for an also a remarkably thoughtful and sweet friend who for some reasons decides to bless me with her presence to this day.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who comments, reads, kudos-es, whateva you do! Every little bit is cherished by me, always.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @ proudspires getting into shenanigans!

John had hoped that Elliot would go to sleep, but he knew the chances of that happening were slim to none and he wasn’t surprised when, out of what he could only assume was pure spite and anger, she stayed awake the entire drive to the compound. She stayed awake through John recounting what they had experienced of the cult already, what they knew about Faith; Elliot stayed oddly silent, in the way that swelled with the knowledge that she probably knew more than what she was letting on, but John didn’t push.

Jacob stuck to the side roads, the back roads, keeping them as far from the most populated areas as possible: and John could see that it drove Elliot batty, knowing they could just stop at Fall’s End. The radio’s gospel songs echoed eerily in the cab of the truck. After about five minutes of it playing—and, coincidentally, about two minutes after Elliot had smoked down the entirety of her first cigarette—she blurted out, “Can you turn that shit off?”

“Why?” Jacob asked evenly, and John passed a hand over his face tiredly as he heard Elliot take in a huge breath, as though she needed to make sure she properly had enough oxygen to spit her venom out.

As John began tiredly, “Deputy, mind yourself and close your mouth,” Elliot bulldozed him to say, “Because I’ve got a head wound that seems to get exacerbated by idiotic cultists,” their voices once again overlapping until their words strangled each other, Elliot glaring at John. He really wished she would stop looking so betrayed when he took the side of one of his brothers; it wasn’t as though she and him had ever really felt like a _team_ , anyway.

Except for the ranch, dispatching of those Swedes in tandem. And except for when they’d been driving, and Elliot had actually looked happy for a second, even with their hands cuffed together. And except for—

 _Knock that shit off,_ John thought to himself, just in time for Joseph to say, “It seems as though your time together has made an improvement on your temperament, Deputy Honeysett.”

“What gave you that impression?” Elliot prompted, despite John’s not-so-subtle pleading look.

“Well,” Joseph continued, “we always do try to have _faith_ , you know, especially in our brother. But considering the animalistic state you were delivered to him in, I would have expected much more poor behavior out of you.” A gentle smile tugged at his lips, an expression John could see reflected in the rearview mirror. “I like to see the impact he’s had on you.”

John couldn’t quite sort out how he felt about his brother’s words. He wanted to be proud; he wanted to think, _yes, see? I’ve tamed her, the hellcat, look at her keeping her hands to herself._ He wanted to, but there was a complicated feeling wound up in it, because he saw the way Joseph’s words struck Elliot, the way they collapsed the iron-clad battlements of her expression, the way they folded her up and crushed them in his proverbial fist. It was exactly what Joseph did; disarmed, unwound, pulled each tangling thread until they were so knotted all you could do was _cut it out._

So yes, John felt an immediate burst of pride in his chest at Joseph’s words, and that pride was almost instantly wiped away at the look on Elliot’s face. It was as though she couldn’t _stand_ the idea that he had made an impression on her, in any way. _Disgust,_ he thought, fending off the insult of her abhorrence of his influence, _hatred. She has always been spiteful and venomous, underneath it all._

“Just wait until you outgrow your usefulness, Seed,” Elliot managed out, her voice crackling with something violent. “You’re the only one I want to see dead before I hand you over to the government.”

Joseph rolled his window down. “I see that your _manners_ still need some polishing, though.”

Elliot looked at John. Her gaze was hard, but he returned it nonetheless, expectantly. She asked, “Proud of yourself, are you?”

“Elliot,” John began, moderating his voice so that he didn’t sound as pleased as he felt (and of course he didn’t know _why_ he was doing that; there was no reason he should work so hard to preserve Elliot’s feelings, and _yet…_ ) so that she wouldn’t be right about him, “it doesn’t…”

“Shut up,” the blonde snapped. Her voice rattled, with anger and with the _sick_ inside of her. She pressed herself back into the corner of the bench seat in the back; she looked like she wanted to melt into the truck’s frame. “I’m fucking tired of your voice.”

“Watch your mouth,” Jacob said from the front seat.

“You shouldn’t be smoking,” John interjected tartly, feeling himself scramble for something—anything—that felt like normal between them again; the normal that had happened with being forced into each other’s company. “Not until you get better. You still sound sick.”

“ _You_ got those cigarettes for me,” Elliot quipped, vitriolic, “and what the _fuck_ isn’t clear about shut up?” 

As soon as the words left her mouth Jacob pushed on the brakes, _hard_ , the movement slamming the back of her head against the window in the back of the truck. The blonde let out a volley of swears, her hand flying to the back of her head instantly.

Jacob said, his voice prickling with hostility, “I told you to watch your mouth.”

“Jacob—” John began, having braced himself against the driver’s seat, but he could already feel Elliot _seething_. 

“You _fuckhead_ ,” Elliot bit out, spiteful as ever, her fingers coming away sticky and crimson. “You absolute piece of—”

“Jacob,” Joseph murmured, “let’s not waste time on the road.”

“Elliot, stop squirming,” John insisted, his voice more urgent now. “You’re going to get blood everywhere.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is it inconvenient for you that your brother reopened my _fucking head wound_?”

“That isn’t what I meant,” John growled. “ _Stop_ _squirming._ ”

His voice came out more authoritative than he had intended, wound up-tight and hard by the antagonizing nature of Elliot and Jacob’s exchange. The blonde’s jaw clenched, but she stilled; his hands went to her face, tilting her head so that he could take a look at the wound. Reopened, yes, but only just.

“Don’t move,” John said firmly. He could feel Joseph’s eyes on him, and he thought he knew what he was thinking—that once again, he had reaffirmed Joseph’s words, that he had made some kind of an impression on her, that had he told Elliot two days ago to stand still so he could look at a wound that she probably would have sunk her teeth into his arm like a wild animal.

“Didn’t grab any bandages when we were at the ranch, huh?” John asked, trying at something closer to civil.

“I wasn’t thinking particularly beyond bare necessities,” Elliot replied dryly, her voice muffled by her chin tucked against her chest. John made a noise of agreement—he hadn’t thought to grab any, either, having anticipated they’d get the fuck out and be at the compound by now—and sighed a little.

“Well, let’s rip your shirt.”

“Why aren’t we ripping _your_ shirt?” Elliot prompted, and John blinked at her incredulously.

“Do you have any idea how much this shirt costs?”

“Oh, you pretentious little _manchild_ —”

“Fine!”

John didn’t rip his shirt. Instead, he peeled the shirt off, shrugging out of it and folding it to press the gathering of fabric to the wound. Elliot straightened back up into a sitting position, reaching up; her fingers fluttered over John’s, almost shyly, replacing the pressure of his hand with her own so that he could pull away and let her hold it herself.

“You should have just ripped it,” Elliot said, her eyes flickering over him before she caught herself and looked away. Were John not convinced she was running a fever, he _might_ have thought he saw her blushing. All the same, he felt the corners of his mouth tick in something close to a smile.

“It’s easier to scrub blood out than it is to stitch it back together.”

“That’s our John,” Joseph acquiesced from the front sagely. “Ever-giving.” He paused, tilting his head to peer at Elliot and John in the back, “All we ask for is a little civility, deputy. After all, it is _our_ sister that’s been kidnapped.”

Elliot replied, “You seem very concerned about that.” And then, “By the way, they have Joey too, which wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t pass her off to this idiot,” and she jerked her thumb at John.

“If they wanted to kill Faith, they would have already,” Jacob replied, hitting the bridge to the island and flipping the cruise control on as he blithely ignored her comment about Hudson. “Since she was alive when the two of you saw her. Isn’t that right?”

Elliot muttered something of an agreement, as though Jacob were not saying the things she had already said, as though she so desperately did not want to agree with him about something that she would rather choke on her own words than say it out loud.

“We have some search parties sent out,” Jacob continued, his steely gaze sweeping across the road as he flicked the turn signal on—certainly, pure habit at this point. “To pin them down. Once we have them located, we can work on getting Faith back and wiping them out.”

The blonde beside him was quiet, now. As Jacob pulled the truck into the compound—which looked nothing short of a ghost town, now—John glanced over at her again, nursing the wound with his shirt. She looked only tired, as though she’d spent all of her energy in just this car ride alone.

Jacob put the truck into park and turned it off; as they filed out of the car, John swept his gaze over the compound; everything seemed peaceful, as if nothing were happening, a low breeze drifting over the houses and church while the early afternoon sun drenched it in a harsh, unforgiving light. Though it was quiet, the stillness of the compound unsettled him, and the knowledge that many of their followers had been tucked away in the bunkers for safekeeping made his skin crawl.

“John.” Joseph’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. “Why don’t you take our dear deputy to one of the guesthouses to get settled in? There’s no reason why she can’t rest while we’re getting the radios set up to contact her...” His voice trailed off as he seemed to search for a word, and then eventually mustered up, “Friends."

“I’m not your dear anything,” Elliot said slamming the truck door behind her. Joseph’s lips quirked in a small, muted smile, his eyes beneath the yellow lenses of his glasses nearly unreadable.

“Not yet,” Joseph relented.

John's hand reached Elliot’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said, shaking the way Joseph’s pinning gaze unsettled him, just a little, like there was nothing that was happening that his brother wasn’t cataloging for later.

“Don’t touch me,” she muttered, shrugging his hand off of her but following him nonetheless. John could hear his brothers exchanging words in low voices on their way into the church, and that little sting in his chest lingered, more firmly: the idea that Joseph was _pawning off_ responsibility to him to make him feel like he was doing something important remained.

Elliot pushed the door to a guest house open. “You really just took your whole shirt off instead of ripping a little piece, huh?” she said. It might have been her attempt at casual conversation, but John couldn’t say for sure. It was always so hard to tell what was going to trip that hairpin trigger into enemy territory again.

“It’s Versace, Elliot.”

“Oh, _boo_.” She pulled it away from her head. “I think you just wanted a reason to be shirtless in front of me.”

John blinked. He didn’t know what to say to _that_ , the most friendly, _nearly flirty_ thing Elliot Honeysett had said to him in many years—which was saying a lot, considering the last time they had spoken in a friendly manner, she’d hardly said more than a stammer of a sentence to him before Joey Hudson swept her away.

“Wouldn’t you like that?” he managed out after a moment, taking the shirt back from her as he got his mental footing back. “I saw you looking. No need to be shy about it, though—we’ve already established you find me handsome.”

Elliot scoffed, but he saw her face flood with red just before she turned away, pacing to the bathroom at the back of the house. “ _Found_ , once, years ago,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t let it inflate your ego, Seed.”

He called after her, “Too late,” and she slammed the bathroom door; the very definitive sound of the shower running echoed in the empty house, and John exhaled a small breath in relief.

As he inspected the bloodstain that had gathered on the front of the shirt, he felt a pleasant little thrill in his chest; a stain was a small price to pay for having made Elliot squirm her way out of that conversation, he supposed, and he remembered the way Joseph had said, _I like to see the impact he’s had on you_. 

_Not so wild now,_ John thought, _are you, hellcat?_

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

The benefits of a hot shower were never to be underestimated.

Though Elliot had gone into her shower feeling bedraggled, worn down, _furious_ , and more than unseated—both by Joseph’s assertion that there was a _yet_ to be had with the friendliness of their relations, but also by John’s casual confidence in her attraction to him.

She _wasn’t_ attracted to him. John had held her under like he was going to drown her, _really_ drown her. He’d wanted to tattoo _wrath_ right on her chest. 

Elliot’s fingers fluttered over the spot where John’s had dragged, just a day or so ago now, as he said, _I think it’ll fit nicely right here, don’t you think? Maybe just over her heart._ The same place dream-John had touched, the same place her skin had been burning when flower-eyed John, spilling petals from his mouth, had gripped her face in his hands.

They were getting mixed up in her head now, all of these Johns: the John she had spooned for warmth with in the forest, the John that hadn’t complained when she anchored her fingers into his arm for steadiness, the John that held each side of her face while her body and mind split, somewhere in the middle, bringing her back down before she slipped away permanently; they all wove and intermingled themselves with the others that she knew, the Johns that kidnapped her friends or kidnapped her or held her under or leered at her in a bar when she was young.

It was almost— _almost_ —romantic, the kind of ferocious dichotomy she would have read in a book somewhere, sometime, in a place where she still had the leisure to do something like that: read a book, take a nap, browse television channels. 

Almost, but not quite, because there was and could never be something _romantic_ about John Seed.

Elliot startled out of her thoughts when someone knocked on the bathroom door, the sound echoing in the small bathroom much louder than she thought the knocks would have actually been.

“You’re not climbing through the window right now, are you?” John’s voice came through the door. Elliot quickly wiped the amusement she felt creeping into her face and ducked her head under the water, the heat of it stinging her wound in a sort of catharsis.

“If I was,” Elliot called back, “what would you do?”

“Very funny, Elliot.” And then: “I’d probably kick this door down.”

“How _very_ caveman.”

“Well, you know—desperate times. Plus, I hear women like that kind of thing.”

She rubbed her face with both hands to stop the smile tugging at her mouth. She had to keep focused: she had to remember the way John had practically _glowed,_ radioactive with pride at Joseph’s praise that he’d made an impact on her, that he was changing her. For the better, they thought. For _them._ Elliot had hardly seen John around his brothers, but the short amount of time that she had (and wasn’t drugged out of her mind) it had become very clear to her that the relationship between them wasn’t as easy to swallow as she would have thought.

But it was easy, when she was given the luxury of a hot shower that molded all of her muscles into relaxation, to feel like they were on a team. It was easy—especially when John had handled her so carefully, like his hands hadn’t inflicted pain on numerous other people, like he hadn’t carved sin after sin into flesh as a macabre brand. _Easy,_ Elliot thought, willing herself to turn off the hot water, because she couldn’t stay in a shower forever. _Easy to forget. I can’t forget what’s happened._

“Any chance you’ve got some jeans out there?” Elliot said, stepping out of the shower and finding a clean (clean?) towel hanging; she didn’t have much time to be picky, so she wrapped it around herself and squeezed some of the water out of her hair. Outside, she could hear John stomping around, fumbling through things, and once she’d gotten mostly dried off she opened the door.

“Oh,” John said, like he hadn’t been expecting her, standing just a foot away from the door and holding a collection of clothes in his arms. Jeans, it looked like, and a few shirts. His own shirt was back on, the dark bloodstain turning the navy blue nearly black on the front.

“Oh?” Elliot prompted. She held her hand out for the clothes while the other kept the towel in place.

“It’s just that you look...” He paused, and then handed her the clothes, regarding her almost warily. “You look—”

And he stopped again, and Elliot thought, _well go on, spit it out, then,_ her eyebrows arching upward expectantly.

“Nice,” he said after a moment. As though catching himself, he amended, “Normal, I mean.”

Elliot’s expression deadpanned. “I _am_ normal, John. You’re the one that’s part of a cult, remember?”

He squinted his eyes at her. The spell was broken; the clock had struck midnight; he was no longer enchanted with her, numerous days of grime scrubbed off of her body.

Rather than argue the logistics of his family’s venture being a cult or not, John said, “Change quick, it shouldn’t take long for them to get the radio ready.”

“Yes, boss,” Elliot replied demurely, mimicking the words he’d used when she’d told him to shut up and be a good blanket. John’s eyes flashed to her face and then away, but she didn’t spend too long trying to parse out what his expression was; she closed the door and busied herself with shimmying into the clothes, leftovers from Eden’s Gate members, it seemed. Relatively clean, too, considering she usually saw peggies in various states of disarray and neglect.

After she’d pulled the rest of her clothes on, the white shirt—clearly meant for a man—nearly swallowing her up, she kicked the old, dirty clothes out of the way and opened the door.

“Would you have really kicked the door down if I was climbing through the window?” Elliot asked, scrunching her hair. The back of her head throbbed, but in a pleasant way; the wound had been thoroughly rinsed, and though it still ached from Jacob’s foot slamming the brakes, she didn’t think it was concussive. Yet.

John leaned against the door, regarded her with a dry expression. “Why?” he asked. She opened the door from the “guest house”—it was really more a _bunkhouse_ than anything—and shrugged.

“I hear women like that kind of thing.”

A swift, easy breeze drifted through the doorway as Elliot stepped outside, taking one moment—just one moment—to close her eyes, and breathe, and think, _I’m so close, Joey, to rescuing you. I’m so close, I swear I’m on my way to you. Please, just hold out for a little longer._

“—than woman.” John’s voice rattled around in her head, and she opened her eyes looking at him over her shoulder.

“What was that?” she asked.

He sidled up behind her, his hands in his pockets, and bent just a little at the waist so he could say into her ear, “I said, it’s a good thing you’re more _devil_ than woman,” and against the wishes of her mind, the skin of her neck prickled with goosebumps.

She scrunched her shoulder up to her ear to fend him off. “That’s right, John,” she replied evenly, “I _am_ a devil, and don’t you forget it.”

Elliot saw movement out of the corner of her eye, her body stiffening a little before she turned her gaze and saw that it was Joseph, standing at the steps of the church.

“Children,” he called, his voice welling with some kind of emotion that Elliot couldn’t quite pin down—perhaps amusement, or something else. “Are you done? The radio is ready for you, deputy.”

“Born done with this one,” Elliot replied, feeling the small smile that had been fighting its way onto her face slip from her features. There was just something about Joseph that put her on edge; every second she spent in her presence reminded her of the way he’d looked at her, that night in the church, when he’d said, _God will not let you take me._

Like she was the only person in the room. Like she was the only person that had mattered.

Elliot liked to think that she was not the kind of person that would be so easily won over by a cult—but she also knew that they looked for people _like_ her, people with a history of trauma, people who had fewer parents than a child ought to have, people whose one functioning parent was only _barely_ functioning and only crested the standard when they had a few drinks in them. She was exactly the kind of person that Joseph nurtured, cradled, _forgave_ , and she thought that for a second in that church, that night, she had thought about how nice it would be to feel that. Once.

But she had a family, and people who cared about her and relied on her and would miss her. Like Joey.

With long strides, she crossed the small courtyard to the church and stopped in front of Joseph, waiting for him to move aside so that she could go in.

“Feeling better?” Joseph asked her mildly, and when he didn’t move aside she shouldered past him. “You look like one of us.”

“Peachy,” Elliot replied flatly; she purposefully ignored his last words, rinsing them away by focusing on the task at hand. The inside of the church was dim, with only the Eden’s Gate window at the back. Her stomach dropped unpleasantly; a surge of panic washed through her, and she was suddenly reminded of the feeling of Eden’s Gate members shoving past her, watching her through fringes of dark, dirty hair, and Joseph, hands outstretched, _waiting._

And John, prowling in the background, ever a predator waiting for his prey.

Joseph brushed past her, walking down between the rows of seating to where Jacob had set up a table, the radio crackling as he adjusted some settings on it. Elliot pushed her way down as well, hating that her steps faltered, that Jacob’s piercing eyes caught every step that didn’t quite hit the way that she wanted it to. Behind her, she heard the easy, confident cadence of John’s steps, the door to the outside shutting.

For the first time since getting in the truck, Elliot felt like she was in the belly of the beast. _If only,_ a voice inside of her said, _if only you had known this then, instead of now._

“Well,” Jacob said, “are you going to call them or not?”

She snatched the radio out of his outstretched hand, her heart hammering in her chest. So close; she was so close. If she wanted to, she could tell Jerome and the others where she was, flush the Seeds out well and good once and for all.

But she couldn’t, because she still needed them. At least, she needed _one_ of them, to get Joey back.

Elliot adjusted the settings on the radio to the proper channels, swallowing thickly, and hit the button on the side. Joseph lingered under the window, a few feet away, his back to her; behind her, she heard John’s steps pacing closer to her.

The radio clicked, static buzzing patiently on the end. Her mouth felt dry. “Jerome?” she asked, tentatively into the static. “Jerome, do you—read? It’s me.” And then, quickly and feeling like an idiot, “Elliot, I mean. It’s me, Elliot.”

Silence stretched on the other side for just a moment. Then, the static crackled, and a familiar voice broke over the radio, _“Elliot? It’s so good to hear your voice again. Thank God, we were—”_ Jerome’s voice broke up a little, and then picked up, _“—about you. Where are you? Did you get away from John?”_

Relief immediately flooded her system, the sensation almost painful; her heart thudded painfully against her chest, and she gripped the table with her free hand to keep herself steady.

“I—” Elliot paused. Her gaze flickered to John, who now lingered to the right of her; Jacob loomed to the left, and Joseph, ever the pinnacle, ever the point of the pyramid, just in front of her. The closest to heaven.

John’s gaze weighed down on her, pinning her, so that instinctively she wanted to squirm right out of it.

“—I’m okay, don't worry about me," she said after a moment. "I'm on my way to get Joey. Jerome, I need you to listen to me."

 _“Tell me where you are,”_ Jerome insisted, his voice crackling through the radio with urgency. “ _We’ll help you get Hudson back. It’s been quiet, here.”_

John rolled his eyes, barely veiling his contempt. Elliot shot him a look and cleared her throat, trying to ignore the way that the pastor’s words clutched and pulled at her heart. Jerome’s voice was like a balm to her nerves; she realized, quite suddenly, how much she actually missed being around people who weren’t the Seeds, or members of Eden’s Gate—someone who actually cared about her.

“Please listen to me,” she tried again. “There’s someone else here. A different group, a new—cult. They’re here and I think they’re going to wipe everyone out. I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but you need to take everyone out of Fall’s End and get them out of here, okay? Everyone, and just evacuate as fast as you can.”

 _“What? Elliot, what are you talking about?_ ” Jerome’s voice faltered for a moment, and then he said, _“Please don’t try and Atlas this thing, deputy.”_

Elliot pressed her hand to her forehead. When she lifted her head, Jacob’s eyes were fixed on her, and he said, “Two minutes, deputy.”

 _Of course,_ she thought, both exhausted and infuriated. _This fucking Darwinian psycho wouldn’t want to give them a fighting chance._ "There wasn't a fucking time limit on this radio call before."

"You're calling the people that want us dead," Jacob deadpanned. "One minute."

Elliot wanted to say that not even a full minute had passed, but she knew better. She bit down on her cheek until she tasted cooper, trying to refocus her attention.

“There’s no time, Jerome,” she insisted, talking faster now as the proverbial clock ticked down. “Take everyone from Fall’s End and leave, okay? I’m getting Joey and we’ll meet up with you a town over, or further way—just don’t stop driving. I can’t explain anymore. I have to go. Jerome?”

There was no answer on the other end for a minute; she could picture Jerome and Mary May arguing back and forth about what they needed to do for this, for _her_ , and her heart ached a little in her chest. Finally, his voice crackled through: _“I hear you, but Elliot—let one of us come and help. We’ll get you and Joey out of here.”_

“Give Mary May a hug for me, okay? And get Dutch, and everyone, and get the fuck out of here.”

 _“Elliot.”_ Jerome’s voice had changed. Her hand had gone to turn the radio off, but it stilled. _“Tell me you’re alright and mean it.”_

It wasn’t his Resistance Business voice, anymore, and nor was it his pastor voice. It was his _dad_ voice, firm and unrelenting, but not unkind. It welled with gentle affection.

Elliot felt her vision wobble a little. It was embarrassing, that Jerome could disarm her this far away, without seeing her or knowing what the last two days had been. She swallowed thickly and ducked her head against her chest a little when her breath shuddered in her chest.

_“We’re worried about you, kid. All of us.”_

“Deputy,” Jacob said, impatient, and Jerome continued, _“You can tell me if it’s not okay.”_

“I’m alright,” she managed out into the radio, willing the tears back away, back from where they had come from. “I’m alright, Jerome, I promise. Please get everyone out of here.”

She put the radio back down on the table and switched it off; she exhaled sharply, once, through her nose. Her chest felt tight, and her body _ached_ , every muscle and tendon and joint in her body feeling deeply bruised. She thought, for one awful, terrible moment, that she might actually start crying right here in front of all of the men she least wanted to do that in front of.

“I guess we’ll see if they make it out,” Jacob said, his voice painstakingly casual and clipped all at once. Elliot felt something hot and sticky flare in her chest, like all of the oxygen had been sucked right out of the air around her. "And if they don't, well—probably means they weren't ever meant to."

She didn’t want to think about the Resistance not making it out; she didn’t want to think about the slow, oozing creep of the cult sidling up on them, of Ase’s fingers on their faces, lovingly planting their gutted corpses with fresh, vibrant blooms.

“Shut the fuck up,” she managed out, her voice wobbling. Jacob’s mouth curved at the corner into something like a wicked smile; he might have been infuriated by her petulance, she thought, if her voice wasn’t thick and wet with unshed tears. She straightened up, digging her nails into her palms, thinking, _I could kill him right now, wrap my hands right around that big neanderthal neck and strangle the life right out of him._

But she couldn’t, even if at that moment she really wanted to, because talking to Jerome for even that short time had reminded her about what it felt like to have people around her that cared about her; it had reminded her about being around people that she trusted, that trusted _her_ , that shared the same beliefs. That wanted to take care of her.

She had almost forgotten that, being handcuffed to John Seed for almost two days straight.

“We’ll pray for their safe departure, of course,” Joseph said. His words echoed, tinny and hollow, in her head. She blinked furiously. Elliot was only vaguely aware of John pacing back across the room and saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear what it was; not really.

 _I am so tired,_ she thought, over the sound of John talking to her. _I am so tired, and I want to go home._

“When will your peggies be back?” she asked, interrupting the sound of Jacob and John blustering back and forth. Joseph paused, and then cocked his head at Jacob expectantly. She waited for one more beat and then said, louder and with more fervent impatience, “I said, when will your little cockroaches be back from finding Joey and Faith?”

Jacob replied, bitingly, “Within the next few hours. They’re going to pin down a location and get back to us.”

“Great.” Elliot turned on her heel, marching herself down the same hallway that just a little over a week ago, she had been walking down with Burke and Whitehorse. “Fuck off until then, you piece of shit.”

It felt like her lungs might burst, or her heart might beat right out of her chest, before she made it out of the stifling darkness of the church. She pushed the door open and hurried outside to take a lungful of fresh air, air unpopulated and unshared with Seed _boys_.

 _I’m just one girl._ The thought was a desperate one, one that turned over and over again in her mind. That these things were just happening _to_ her, that she had no agency in her life, that it might always be like this. Forever. _I’m just one girl._

Elliot walked to the bunkhouse, pushing each step into the dirt in the hopes of feeling more grounded, each breath of air slowly bringing her back to the earth. When she made it inside, she closed the door quickly behind her and paced, rubbing her face. The bunkhouse no longer felt surprisingly clean. It only served as a reminder of where she was, where she wasn’t, where she might never go again.

She pushed her hands against her face until spiderwebs crawled behind her eyelids. They blistered, red fractals of light swimming in her non-vision. She was only a girl, and she was alone—no family and no friends nearby to help, and that was supposed to be good; if Jerome listened to her, they'd be out of Hope County within a few hours.

There was no more room for error. Fall's End evacuating meant there was no rescue party coming, in spite of her words. It meant that she was really only going to get one shot at getting in and getting out, for good. Get Joey, get Boomer, get out. Period.

The door clicked open. Footsteps echoed against the hollow wooden flooring. It was John; she could tell by the way he walked. “Elliot.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a statement, not a _how are you_ , but something else, something that Elliot didn’t know what he meant or what he was saying or what he thought to gain from it. Did he ever do anything that didn't have any personal gain for him?

“John,” Elliot said, her hands pressed into her face, “can you just leave? I am so tired of hearing your voice.”

“Elliot,” John said again, “take a breath.”

“I _am_ breathing, you fuckhead,” she snapped viciously, turning to face him—John, in his stupid fucking designer shirt, his head cocked to the side as he watched her, the venom in her voice landing but not hitting the way it should have. “Do you have _any_ idea what it’s like to be _alone?_ Really, truly alone? Like, for fucking good, unless by some godforsaken miracle your insane brothers don’t kill me as soon as I’ve served the purpose of fetching Faith back.”

“I do," John replied angrily, "and they don’t want to—”

“Oh fuck _off_ , John.” She raked her fingers through her hair. There was a nasty, wicked monster, crawling up from through her, fingers sliding between the slats of her ribs to get a good grip. “You should see yourself whenever Joseph says anything. You practically fall over to kiss the ground he fucking walks on, and for what? For him to give you a little pat on the head? You’d do absolutely anything he asked you to. You’re fucking pathetic.”

 _That_ hit the way she wanted to. She saw the hurt slide across John’s face, and then the anger, a power-point presentation on How To Make One Man Hate You. 

“You have a lot of nerve, _deputy_ ,” John bit out (and she didn’t miss the way he no longer was using her name, like he wanted to distance himself from her), “to talk to _me_ like that, given that you would probably be lying dead in a field with flowers coming out of your eyes without me. Not to mention that you need us to get your little friend Hudson back—”

“It’s _your fucking fault!”_

She _felt_ the rasp in her throat, the claws of sickness shredding her delicate insides as her voice flexed painfully in volume. John was staring at her, and she thought, _I have to stop yelling, I have to stop, this is just what they want, for me to lose control,_ but she _couldn’t_ , the words welling up inside of her, wrecked and vicious, and she felt like all of the blood had fled from her hands and feet; she was ice, now, frigid and unyielding.

John’s mouth twisted, like he was shaping the words he wanted to say before he said them. He started, less heated this time, “Elliot—”

“It’s _your_ fault,” she interrupted, clenching her fists at her sides until her hands itched and burned with the intense need for circulation. “It’s your fault—I should—I should be leaving with Fall’s End and leaving this absolute fucking _nightmare_ behind, or—or maybe that shouldn’t be happening at all because this is _my fucking home_ and you and your stupid family _took_ that from me, and I fucking _hate_ you, John Seed, John Duncan, whatever the fuck your name is, whoever _the fuck_ you are, I don’t care and I hate you!”

He stepped forward, his hands lifted, like he was going to touch her; perhaps rest his hands on her shoulders, take her face the way he’d grown so accustomed to doing when her breathing shallowed and her eyes unfocused. But she pushed his arms out of her immediate vision, and while infuriatingly he didn’t get out of her space she still bit out, _crushing_ the words on their way past her teeth, “Don’t _fucking_ touch me, John,” and his hands dropped back to his sides. 

She tried to ignore the strange, fleeting disappointment: as though she had been anticipating his grounding touch, as though she had _wanted_ it, her body betraying her words and her head.

 _No more,_ she thought through the haze in her mind, _no more of that._

He shifted on his feet. “You’re tired,” he said after a moment, which sounded not like the thing that he wanted to say but instead the thing that he decided was safe. “You should rest. The search parties will be back soon, and you’ll need to be at full capacity.”

Elliot stared at the bloodstain on his shirt. It felt like all of her insides had been scooped out, emptying her; her stomach twisted, both with anxiety and hunger.

“Yeah,” she replied numbly. “Alright, John.”

He turned on his heel, walking through the door to the bunkhouse and letting it swing shut behind him. The room felt colder without another human body in there; emptier, _lonelier._ Elliot sat herself down on the wooden floor and pushed her face into her knees.

 _This wasn’t supposed to be me._ Her ears rang, her heart thudding painfully in her chest, a black stone falling over and over until her ribs bruised and cracked. _This wasn’t supposed to be my life._

She closed her eyes tight, arms looped around her knees, pressed against the wall of the bunkhouse, and willed herself to sleep.


	9. heartlines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elliot and John reach a tentative (see: tempestuous) agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing to say for myself, except: thank you thank you thank you! Everyone's comments really just got me through the real brunt of this chapter and it's a long one, oh boy. I cannot reiterate enough how much the hopeless romantic in me desperately wants them to just live happily ever after, and also how MUCH it really means to me to see your guys' feedback, but alas alack, here we are; I, with my long-winded author's notes saying the same thing every time, but I am just as grateful each time it happens.
> 
> As always, I have the best, sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful and wonderful proof-reader but most importantly friend who helped me block out this chapter because I was really, really struggling with it. [Starcrier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrier/pseuds/Starcrier), my lover my life my shawty my wife, she is Elliot's number one stan and also an incredible writer so please go check out her stuff!!
> 
> On a brief tangent, I have some beautiful artwork made the artist [raviollies](https://raviollies.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, which you can find [here!](https://proudspires.tumblr.com/post/628710274838528001/i-loved-him-i-think-shameless-laid-before-him) I definitely did cry a little tiny bit over it.
> 
> No warnings in this chapter aside from canon-typical violence and language. I hope you enjoy!

_It’s your fucking fault._

Elliot’s words, venomous little baby snakes spitting their venom, crawled around the bone arena of his skull. John could not stop replaying them in his head, even though he desperately wanted to; the idea that the rookie deputy might now well and truly hate him— _really_ hate him, more than she maybe ever had before—was an unsettling one. He liked to think that it was because he was worried what Joseph would think if they no longer had her cooperation, her _good behavior_ , but—

But there was something else that dug at him. There was something else squirming in the cavity of his chest, sinking its nails right into him, but he couldn’t pick it out, couldn’t pull it apart.

(Or maybe he didn’t want to; maybe the idea of identifying what this strange and unknowable beast inside of him _was_ kept him from trying too hard, a good enough reason to throw up his hands and say, _sorry, I just can’t._ )

He pushed the door to the church open, stepping back inside to the cool, dim quiet. Jacob had pulled a map out and spread it over the table, the radio set aside; Joseph sat in a front-row pew, one leg crossed over his knee and his expression mild.

“Did you get the opportunity to chat?” he asked, without looking at John, as though he just knew that it was him and not someone else coming in. “She seemed…” Joseph’s head tilted, just a little. “... Unseated.”

John hesitated, and then began walking down the aisle. “Yes,” he replied. “Although, I don’t know if _chat_ is the proper word for it, considering that she all but put her teeth in my neck.”

“I thought you liked that kind of thing?” Jacob supplied without a hint of a humorous inflection in his voice, and John shot him a dirty look.

“Bleeding out to death? Not particularly.”

Joseph nodded, the gesture gentle, ignoring the bickering. “It does appear as though our deputy is not a damsel in distress, but rather a damsel under duress.” He turned to look at the youngest Seed brother when he reached the front of the church. “But it _is_ nice to see the foundation you’ve put down, John. You’re taking my advice, and it isn’t going unnoticed.”

He felt something pleasant and warm bloom in his chest, billowing up into his head until it almost completely gassed out the venomous little vipers Elliot had planted in his mind. “I did have an idea about that,” he added, feeling more emboldened by Joseph’s praise as he walked past the table. “About endearing the deputy to us.”

“Oh? Well, I’m all ears.”

John’s gaze flickered across the space between his two brothers. Jacob had said nothing; he was bent over the map, dog tags glinting in the single beam of light that hit them from the window, one veiny hand clenched into a fist as it held the map in place.

“Maybe,” John continued, “our dear brother could try to stop antagonizing her.”

“Why?” the red-headed deadpanned, not looking up from the map. The fact that Jacob didn’t even deign to make eye-contact with him was enough to make irritation prickle in his chest, raise his proverbial hackles.

“Why?” John reiterated. “Perhaps because each time you open your mouth, you _incriminate_ yourself as a villain—and us too, by proxy.”

“You can drop the attorney lingo,” Jacob said dryly, finally lifting his head to look at John—and John wished that he _hadn’t_ , because the half-lidded, arrogant gaze of his eldest brother only served to stoke the fires of anger inside of him.

“It’s just my vocabulary, Jacob, and you missed the entire point, _by the way_ , so in the interest of making sure we’re all on the same page—”

“—not an idiot, little brother, so you don’t need to—”

“I think John is right,” Joseph interrupted, effectively silencing the argument that was brewing. “He’s done exactly as I asked of him. Think of a stray dog, Jacob; you don’t beat it into submission. You feed it, nurture it, gain its trust, and then it becomes a lifelong companion.” The hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “A _loyal_ companion.”

“This is an age-old philosophical debate.” Jacob’s brows furrowed together; a deep-set frown sat on his face. “A classic: _is it better to be feared than to be loved?_ I think that we’re going to disagree fundamentally on this one.”

“Well,” Joseph replied mildly, “aren’t we lucky that there’s only one of us in charge of how our deputy is treated, then?”

John’s breath flickered out of his chest in a single blink at Joseph’s words. Casual and ever-so-patient, as though Jacob’s jaw weren’t setting in preparation to argue, as though it didn’t strike John right in his gut to hear Joseph say, _there’s only one of us in charge of how our deputy is treated_ , as though it didn’t twist the knife right between his ribs to hear Joseph refer to Elliot as _their_ deputy, over and over again.

A stamp. A brand. Joseph claimed, like he always did, the things that he thought rightfully belonged to him.

“ _Someone’s_ lucky,” Jacob said at last, a final and reluctant acquiescence.

Joseph’s small smile did not disappear. In fact, it seemed only to root itself more firmly on his face, as though he were pleased at Jacob’s unease. Joseph’s gaze flickered back to John, settling on him and then beckoning him forward.

He did as Joseph bid, coming and sitting beside his older brother and clearing his throat. He wanted to stop thinking about the way that Joseph had said _our deputy,_ like he had any claim on Elliot—and that shouldn’t have bothered John, but it _did_ , wriggled its way through the spaces between his ribs and _squeezed_ , nice and tight.

“She was upset,” Joseph said, when John had settled next to him; it was not a question, but a statement, an assertion of what Joseph knew to be true. Their eldest brother scoffed from his spot at the table, bent back over the map, tracing and re-tracing the topography lines. John shifted in his seat a little.

“I think Jacob might have ruined any chance at a merciful conversion when he mentioned that her friends would deserve it if they didn’t make it out.” John’s voice was hard when he shot the red-head a stinging look, but unsatisfyingly, Jacob did not lift his head this time. John felt the strain of his brows furrowing at the center of his head, and then Joseph’s hand was on the side of his face, fingers spreading against his hair, primed and comfortable to grip.

“Grief,” Joseph said, his voice low and soothing, “is a part of _change._ Like shedding a skin.”

“It’s not—she was _furious_ with me,” John replied, grimacing. “She just kept saying she hated me, and us. Joseph, I think—it would be beneficial to let me do things my way—”

“Our deputy is killing the person she used to be, John.” Joseph’s gaze was steady, piercing, a venomous yellow. His other hand came to the right side of John’s face, cradling him. “Strangling her old self, with her own hands. People like us, we’re lucky; we’ve always known who we were meant to be.” He leaned against the wooden backing of the pew again. “You’ve guided her here. Give her a while to grieve that girl from before. Patience is a virtue.”

John’s throat felt tight. He thought the Elliot in the bar those years ago—flushing and soft, breathless when he leaned into her—and the Elliot threatening to choke a man to death in front of him if he didn’t beg for his life, and the Elliot who played baseball with a shovel and a man’s head, and the Elliot that smoked a cigarette down to nothing while she cranked _Welcome To The Jungle_ up on a van stolen from a group of crazy Swedish cultists.

He was not convinced she had not _already_ killed the girl she used to be.

“You have got to have faith.” Joseph’s voice broke him out of his reverie. When John looked over to his brother, Joseph was absently dragging his thumb along his lower lip, his eyes fixed on the Eden’s Gate emblem glowing above them in the afternoon light. “Remember what I said; you have to love them. I know you can do this for me.”

His throat felt tight. This would be easier, he thought, if he could have just done everything this way. _Wrath_ , he thought, _would look perfect on her._ But that wasn’t right; wrath _already_ fit her. There was no skin to be shed. It was already on.

“John.”

He dragged his gaze from the white collar of Joseph’s shirt to his brother’s gaze, meeting it.

“Tell me you can do this,” Joseph said, his voice lower now, softer. It was not his counseling voice; this was _Joseph_ asking him, his brother, not the man who led the masses. Asking, demanding, but waiting patiently for it to be given, never taking before it was time.

He was no longer thinking about Elliot at her fiercest, but rather the way she had softened for him, on occasion. Pressed against him for warmth, lashes wet with tears, unwilling to let go of his arm.

“I can,” John replied, “for you.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

Elliot didn’t know for how long she slept. When she woke, the sun was still in the sky, the air felt sticky and wet with late-summer humidity, and while she slept sweat had gathered at the nape of her neck and in the hollows and dips of her body. For a second, panic filled her—she couldn’t remember where she was, or how she got there, confusion twisting and knotting its way through her.

And then she remembered. She was in Joseph’s compound, in a bunkhouse that served as a home to Eden’s Gate members, dressed in Eden’s Gate clothes sans her boots and underclothes. Elliot wiped the sweat from her forehead and pulled her hair out of the ponytail. Standing proved dizzying, and she felt the dehydration twisting around in her stomach like a scorpion; stinging, and unkind.

“Fuck,” she said, pressing the heel of her palm to her eye. The gesture reminded her that she had done it just recently; just before she screamed at John, just before she told him that she hated him. _Oh, yes. That._

Grief still squirmed around inside of her, but it had been abated, for now, and she thought that she almost—

“No.” Elliot’s voice was firm, but still wobbled on its legs, when she spoke to herself. “I don’t feel bad about what I said.”

“Good to know.” It was John’s voice from the doorway, bringing with him a hot breeze that should have felt good being that they were on an island, but it just added to the humidity. Elliot’s stomach twisted violently at the sound of his voice. It wasn’t _anger_ that populated her mind, now, but embarrassment: that she’d let him get under her skin, that she’d let him see her without her veneer, that he’d been there and endured it and now he stood here again, undeterred, as though John Seed were someone with a moral high ground that allowed him to endure verbal attacks and return as though nothing had happened.

 _I hate you._ Elliot willed the words to her mouth, tried to muster the venom, but she couldn’t. She fixed her eyes instead on the knot of a wooden floor panel, trying to ignore the sight of John moving in the corner of her eyes, closing the space between them. He did this, always—invaded her space, overwhelmed her, until saying things like _I hate you_ became harder.

He smelled like sweat, and day-old cologne, and heat and dust and outside, and when he put his hand on her arm she opened her mouth to say something—anything, any of the venom that might come to her in the heat-addled and perspiring confusion—but he put a cold water bottle, slick with condensation, in her hand.

Her eyes went to find the bloodstain on his shirt when she realized that he wasn’t wearing that shirt anymore. He was in a white shirt, the same kind that Joseph wore.

“Drink,” he said. “I promise it isn’t poisoned.”

Elliot turned the cap of the bottle. It cracked, promising that the seal was freshly broken, and she brought it to her mouth and took one heavy swig before she pulled it away. Her nerve-endings immediately screamed in relief at the water in her mouth, but her stomach lurched—she knew she’d need to pace herself, or she’d be puking it up in a few minutes.

“Did you sleep?” John asked when she didn’t say anything. Elliot sucked her teeth.

“I don’t think we should play at being friends,” she said, her voice wicked with a dry, crackling, wildfire-in-the-making heat. John’s gaze was steady, though, once again unfettered by her words and remaining in her space. She was more aware of it than ever, now: as though resting, and having basic necessities like shower and drinking water also made her all the more aware of John’s presence, the heat radiating off of his body and the way he was watching her—

( _like he couldn’t get enough of her_ )

—like he wanted to make sure that nothing she did escaped him.

“We’re not _playing_ at being friends, deputy,” John drawled, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels a bit as he looked at her. “Whether you like it or not, you and I are on the same side.”

“For now,” Elliot bit out.

“For now,” he acquiesced, as gracious as ever.

Her eyes narrowed. John was not the kind of person who forgave and forgot the sorts of things that she’d said to him. Elliot felt the suspicion rising up in her throat. She kept waiting for the punchline; for John to say something stupid like, _and when this is over you’ll be begging for me to absolve your sins,_ or something equally driven by ego and his desire to have Joseph’s approval.

“So,” John began again, arms unfolding elegantly to be held out in a gesture of harmlessness, “did you sleep?”

Elliot took another swallow of her water bottle, stepping around John. Her body instantly braced itself—as though she expected him to try and stop her—but he didn’t; merely turned with her, a planet trapped in her orbit.

“Briefly.” She kept her voice short and clipped as she headed towards the door. “Are your friends back?”

“Jacob’s ready whenever you are.”

Her face scrunched up at the mention of the eldest Seed brother. She was now unsure which of them was the most unpleasant to be around; they all found their own special ways to get under her skin. John, perhaps, was the worst; Joseph and Jacob, she could handle their particular brand of crazy, but John—he was harder for her to read, because all of the time spent with him had started to cloud her brain.

“Why are you being nice to me?” she demanded, turning suddenly to find that he’d crossed the bunkhouse again, as though to follow her outside. Because she hadn’t quite gone out, yet, he now stood nearly nose to nose with her, even with her back pressed against the door of the bunkhouse.

John’s gaze swept over her. “Does it bother you?”

The plastic of the water bottle crunched in her hand. Her jaw set, painfully tight, holding back her gut reaction—to tell him that _yes,_ it did bother her—and instead swallowed thickly. It would be just like John, to go out of his way to be nice to her because he thought it would unsettle her. But then, wasn’t John all about bending and cracking someone to his will, no gentleness required?

A headache splintered behind her eyes, throbbing painfully. She was spending too much time trying to parse John Seed out, and that was her first mistake.

“I’m just surprised you know how,” Elliot snipped, watching the way her words ticked the corner of his mouth upward in that easy, boyish smile.

“I can be nice,” John offered, “if someone isn’t spitting venom at me nonstop, calling me pathetic.”

“ _Fucking_ pathetic,” she pointed out, ignoring the way John’s eyes flickered down to her mouth and then back up to meet her eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that—”

“—no need to _apologize_ after the fact, deputy—”

“—because I know how sensitive you are,” Elliot finished, wiping the smile off of John’s face, “and since we’re _on the same side,_ I suppose I can’t afford to have you down and out.”

John’s eyes narrowed. His hand found the doorknob, and he was _very_ close, so close all of a sudden that for a brief moment Elliot’s brain short-circuited and all she could think about was how unjust it was that a man so deserving of her venom could make cologne smell so good.

And then he said, “No, I suppose you _can’t_ ,” and opened the door behind her, the heat of the afternoon sun sunk into her skin, sticky and hot. “I work best when my partner isn’t trying to fight me the entire time.”

She turned and stepped out of the bunkhouse, clutching the water bottle in her fist and putting as much distance between herself and John as she said, “And _I_ work the best if you stay the fuck out of my way, John.”

 _No more,_ she thought, decisively, _no more of that._

Images of Eden’s Gate members scattered in her periphery; they were eager to look, but not eager to be seen, so that when she turned her head to find them they were already disappearing behind a corner or into a building. The heat was no more bearable if she was moving, either, the sun high in the sky and threatening to burn any exposed skin.

John fell into step beside her, his hand landing on the doorknob to the church before she could open it, holding it closed while she stopped on the landing.

“Jacob likes when he gets under your skin,” he said to her, the words sounding a little different than before. “He might say whatever he can to rile you up, and make you look unreliable to Joseph.”

Elliot hesitated. She didn’t know why John was giving her this information; not only because she already _knew_ that—because of course Jacob enjoyed pushing her—but she didn’t understand why John was trying to be _helpful._ It was always going to be the Seed brothers against her, wasn’t it?

She thought of the way they had been bickering, the two brothers, while she tried to gather herself after her call with Jerome. She wished she’d been paying attention so that she could know what it was they had been arguing about.

John waited expectantly. He said, “You want to get Joey out of there, don’t you?”

“Of course.” Her brows furrowed. “What kind of—”

“And I want Faith out of there, with as little risk as possible,” he plunged on, keeping the door in place, “so we can’t get outvoted in there. Joseph _does_ take you seriously, though who can imagine why—”

“If you’re trying to convince me we’re actually partners,” Elliot deadpanned, “you’re doing a shit job of it.”

“All I’m saying,” John continued irritably, “is that if we present a unified front in there, we have a better chance of us _both_ getting what we want.”

Elliot didn’t want to admit that he was right. The last thing she ever wanted to do was tell John Seed that he was right about something. But if she had to weigh her options, she’d rather tell John he was right than do whatever the fuck it was that Jacob and Joseph wanted her to do. One Seed brother she could handle.

So, she relented, “Fine.”

John stuck out his free hand to her, grinning. “Shake on it, partner?”

Elliot groaned and swatted his hand away. “Don’t push it, _buck_ ,” she replied, pushing the door open—and this time, John let her, trailing in after her. Jacob and Joseph were in their spots at the front of the chapel, waiting ever-so-patiently. She reminded herself of what John had confirmed; that Jacob liked to see her on the brink of a meltdown, that he was a _pusher._

It did not escape her that John had not offered any insight into Joseph.

“Have a nice nap?” Jacob asked as she came up to the table with the map.

“Funny, John asked me the same thing.” Elliot kept her voice even and took a drink of her water before she started tying her hair back into a ponytail. “So, where are they? Where are Joey and Faith?”

“South of here, the faithful say,” Joseph said before Jacob could speak again. “At Sacred Skies Lake. Just past Angel’s Peak. It sounds like they don’t go by any name, and just call themselves a family.”

“And do the _faithful_ say what they’ve been doing?” she asked tartly. She had an idea of where they had made their home; probably at the abandoned youth camp, though as far as she last remembered that had been occupied by Joseph’s own.

Well, probably not for very long. There was no way Joseph’s little rednecks could hold up to the precision that _these_ crazies had.

“Living,” Jacob replied, his gaze hard and his jaw set. “They’re not doing _anything._ They’re just—there. Like they’re waiting for something.” 

Elliot’s stomach plummeted at Jacob’s words. There was no way he could have _known_ , surely; she hadn’t told John, and she hadn’t said anything to them in the car, about the way Ase had cradled her face, and called her _mor_ , and had said, _I know that you will always come back to us._

_Fuck. There’s no fucking way._

But there _was._ If Ase didn’t have absolute confidence that Elliot would seek them out, why would she have let them go? Why would they have been mostly unscathed? They were playing with their food—a sick, drawn-out catch-and-release.

The brothers had started speaking again. The aqua curve of Sacred Skies on the map burned into her retinas the longer she stared at it without blinking.

“Waiting for me,” Elliot mustered up after a moment, her mouth feeling very dry. “They’re waiting for me.”

Three pairs of eyes fixed on her, all with the same uncanny precision. There was no time for it to bother her; her stomach was already rolling with nausea.

And then Jacob barked out, “Explain,” and she thought she might punch him in the face if he didn’t shut up. Elliot took in a deep breath, mustering all of the composure she could manage, and focused herself on the map.

“When John and I got—when we had our run-in with the family,” she began, “we were separated, and—they drugged me, with something. But their leader, Ase, she was there for a little while—”

“ _What?”_ John demanded. _So much for presenting a unified front,_ she thought ruefully. She shot him a look, willing him to be quiet, to just _let_ her gather her thoughts; blissfully, he did.

“She kept calling me something in Swedish,” Elliot explained, “and she kept saying all of this weird stuff, like—like that she _saw_ my color, that she saw _me,_ and then…”

The Seeds all stared at her, waiting expectantly. Even Jacob remained silent.

“And then she said something like… Like that she was going to let me go, but only because she knew I was always going to come back to her.”

A moment of silence stretched in front of her, endless and dizzying, where no one in the room said _anything_ and all Elliot could think about were all the things that Ase _had said._

And then, as though these words had almost no impact on him, Jacob said, “Well, at least we have proper bait.”

“Absolutely not,” John cut in immediately, angrily. “You’re not putting Elliot out there to try and lure them here—”

“—they _want_ her, I don’t see why we wouldn’t—”

“Brothers,” Joseph interrupted, his voice effectively bringing both John and Jacob to heel. Like before, he stood directly across from Elliot; her gaze was fixed on him now, tumbling Ase’s words around in her head while the Seeds argued about whether or not she was shark bait or not. “What do _you_ think, deputy?”

The words were gentle. Elliot knew what they were; certainly, _Joseph_ knew how long it had been since someone had _asked_ her opinion, rather than her having to fight tooth and nail for someone even to consider it.

“I think—we could get Ase to come out of the youth camp, which is probably where they’re holed up,” she said after a moment, willing the charm of Joseph’s attentiveness away. Her gaze slid to John for a moment. “If we used me as bait.”

“Are you serious?” John demanded. He took her arm in his hand, pulling her from the table and hissing, “When I said present a _unified front_ —”

“If we’re _partners_ , you have to trust me,” Elliot insisted tersely. His expression hardened. A part of her hoped that he regretted suggesting they be anything remotely close to _on the same team_ , and a part of her was glad that he had, or he wouldn’t look like the words _you’re right_ were sitting right on his tongue.

Finally, at last, he said, “ _Fine.”_

Elliot turned back to Jacob and Joseph, with the brunette’s hand still on her arm, and asked, “Are you any good with a sniper rifle?” 

“The best.” Jacob’s voice was clipped, insistent. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“So if I can get Ase out to meet me,” she continued, “can you _not_ shoot me?”

His eyes narrowed, but there was a tiny, tiny smile pulling at his lips. “Scout’s honor.”

John exhaled a sharp, short breath. “This is ridiculous—”

But before he could plunge onward, Joseph held up his hand to stop him. He turned his gaze to her, now, studying her for a few long heartbeats before he said, “Do you think they won’t kill Faith if we kill their leader?”

Elliot shrugged his hand off of her arm and walked back to the table, setting her water bottle on the table and crossing her arms over her chest. “I think like any _snake_ ,” she replied, “the body won’t function if you cut the head off.”

“At any rate,” Jacob interjected, “push comes to shove and you can get in without a firefight to get Faith out of there.”

“ _And_ Joey,” Elliot replied firmly, and stifled down the absolute fury when Jacob shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.

“We’ll start making the preparations immediately.” Joseph sounded pleased. It took everything in her power not to say something just spite that, to remember that even though she didn’t want to be, she _supposed_ that she was on their side, too.

Jacob gathered up the map from the table and immediately set off after Joseph, who had stepped down from the small stage and gone to the side door. Elliot picked up her water bottle and took one more heavy drink to finish it off before she turned and looked at John.

His brows knitted together at the center of his forehead. He looked troubled. It was not an expression that she was used to seeing on John Seed’s face; it might have been endearing, if she didn’t know that he was troubled by _her_ , and not in the fun way.

“Spit it out, then,” Elliot prompted. John heaved a loud, impatient sigh.

“This is a stupid idea,” John said abruptly, _angrily._ It was a change of pace from the cocky asshole he normally liked to be. “There’s no way that they know they aren’t waiting for you to show up so they can skin and gut you, and—”

She waited, patiently, for him to get the words out. Whatever they were, they stuck in his throat.

“—and what use would you be then?” he finished, his lip curling up in clear distaste. _Ah, there he is,_ Elliot thought absently. _Almost thought I’d lost you, John._

“Don’t worry,” she said lightly. When she had capped her water bottle again, she headed to the back of the church. _It feels good,_ she thought, pushing on the door, _to have a plan again_. “I’ll far outlive my use to _you_ , Seed.”

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

The plan was simple.

Elliot was going to walk herself—unarmed, much to her personal chagrin—out to the Sacred Skies Youth Camp, once they dropped her off. Jacob would already be in a position where he could get a good look at what was going on, and when he got a clear shot at Ase, he was going to take it.

And they _were_ banking on the woman coming out to get Elliot herself, based on what Elliot had told them. John was not convinced, but he had been overruled; it was no longer his choice, and instead of going in and being on the same team as _Elliot,_ he had found himself on the opposite of the playing board from all three of them—his brothers _and_ the deputy.

Not ideal.

But now, as John parked the truck at the bottom of the hill leading up to the youth camp, all he could feel was dread knotting his stomach. The plan was supposed to be _simple_ , but John remained unconvinced that it would be executed as easily as everyone seemed to think it would.

Elliot seemed in perfect spirits; she’d eaten a handful of granola bars, finished off two other water bottles, and her coughing had become less frequent. Not once had he seen her reach for a cigarette, either. It was like the second she had an actionable plan, she no longer stressed: there was nothing for her to worry about, beyond getting the job done.

John met her gaze through the rearview mirror. “You’re sure?” he prompted, and ignored the way Joseph’s head gently cocked to the side. Elliot flashed him a smile.

“Just focus on making sure Jacob doesn’t shoot me in the head,” she replied, “okay? And I’ll focus on getting Joey and Faith out of there.”

Joseph said, lightly, “That’s all we could ever hope for, deputy,” and when he did Elliot shot John a look through the mirror, a look that said, _can you fucking believe this guy?_ And for one, brief second it felt like they shared a joke only between the two of them.

Then she pushed the back door of the truck open and kicked her legs out, landing on the dirt road with a soft _thump_. The blonde closed the truck door and then came up to John’s window, which had been rolled down, and said, “You’re _sure_ you don’t want to give me a weapon?”

It would blow the whole fucking thing if they caught her with a gun or a knife, Jacob had said; if by some strange happenstance he _didn’t_ snipe the shit out of the crazy fucking Swedish woman, and Elliot wound up getting dragged into the belly of the beast, having a weapon on her would out her immediately. They would know that she hadn’t come willingly, but that she had come with the intent to harm.

At least in the instance that they somehow avoided Jacob, she could lie her way out of it. Maybe.

“I have absolute _faith_ ,” John said, mimicking Joseph’s veneer of confidence, “that you can make a weapon out of just about anything if you need to.” She patted the side of the truck and took one centering breath, but before she could set off up the hill John said, “Elliot—”

The blonde turned back around to look at him, life and vigor back in her face and one brow arched loftily at him.

 _Be careful,_ he thought to say, the words sticking in his throat. That’s what he should have been saying, if they were actually partners—even _fake_ partners, even _tenuous_ partners, partners-by-proxy because John insisted for the sake of feeling like he had some control over the situation and Elliot because there was no one better that she had the chance to pick. Not exactly setting the bar very high, were they?

“Any day now, John.” Elliot’s voice snapped his attention back to reality. She was waiting expectantly, but there wasn’t impatience in her voice; she was content, at last, to have motion. He cleared his throat.

“Don’t start going yet,” he said, instead of the things he thought would matter, like, _don’t forget to breathe._ “Give Joseph and I a chance to get up to where Jacob is.”

She gave him a two-finger salute, wisps of hair fluttering into her face from a late-afternoon breeze. “Yes, boss.”

John threw the truck into reverse, pulling back and then into a u-turn to head off down the road. The car was silent for a moment, _blissfully,_ with the golden-hour light drenching the two of them in a warm glow. If he didn’t know what was going on just out of reach, he might have felt like he was transplanted into a different time and place entirely.

“You don’t need to worry about her, John,” Joseph said lightly.

“I’m not,” John replied, pulling the truck off of the road. Dry brush crunched and snapped beneath the weight of the tires. “She’s perfectly capable of handling herself with three granola bars in her system and a healthy bout of pneumonia.”

“You sound frustrated.”

“I just think that maybe we could have picked someone that’s not—” John inhaled. He parked the truck deep into a grove; to the right of them, a small trail would lead up to where Jacob waited with his perfect vantage point to see Ase come out and collect Elliot. “—Sick,” he finished, after a moment, “and not such a wildcard. You know she tried to kill one of the guards when I had her at the ranch? She was going to choke him to death, right then and there. For—touching her, or something.”

Joseph looked unaffected as he stepped out of the truck. “I’m unsurprised, if that’s what you’re looking for.” And he paused, looking thoughtful for a moment, before he said, "Touching her, you said?"

John ignored the question. “Well, then maybe that should speak to the level of _reliability_ Elliot displays.”

“I think you’re underestimating the power of a positively-reinforced bond.” As Joseph spoke, John fell into step beside him, climbing up the slope. Behind them, he heard the distant sound of voices; the members of Eden’s Gate that weren’t holed up would be waiting for Jacob’s signal to swarm, if things looked grim. “Didn’t she say she hated you, and us? And yet today, here she is. In a good mood, no longer frothing at the mouth, rabid and dangerous.”

“She’s _still_ dangerous,” John started, but Joseph stopped him by pressing his hands to his shoulders.

“You’ve done exactly as I asked,” he said, a mirror of the words he’d said before. “Remember? You haven’t beaten your stray into submission. This—” Joseph gestured with his hand in the general direction of where they had dropped Elliot off. “—is all only possible because of the work that _you_ have put in, John. And when we bring Faith home, and return to our followers, that is what they’ll remember. Not the person the deputy used to be.”

John’s felt something hot and painful twist in his chest, prickling pain squirming up his spinal cord. He should have been pleased to hear Joseph refer to Elliot as something that belonged to _them_ and instead was giving _him_ some ownership—but he realized too late that it wasn’t what he had been wanting from his brother. This wasn’t what he wanted _from Elliot._

He swallowed and said, thickly, “Yes, Joseph.”

“Good boy.” Joseph held him in a tight hug, the pressure of the gesture relieving some of the stress in his shoulders like muscle memory pulling it right out of him, and then he pulled back. “Now, let’s go and get our sister back, yes?”

His brother stepped up the last stretch of the slope, and he followed obediently behind. Jacob was perched carefully, eyeing the scope and muttering to himself; as John crouched beside him, and Joseph on the other side, the redhead breathed out a little swear.

“Stupid piece of shit,” he sighed. “Remind me to get these upgraded next chance we get.”

“What’s wrong?” John asked, already on edge.

“Nothing’s wrong—the gun’s perfectly functional, it’s just not as stealthy as a rifle should be,” Jacob explained. “It’s got a red dot sight on it.”

John’s eyes narrowed, his teeth clenching. “So they’ll see it the second you get it on that woman.”

“They _might_ ,” Jacob protested, “I’ll just have to be fast.”

“Where’s _your_ rifle?”

“It’s back at the center,” his brother snapped. “I didn't have the opportunity to grab it before I went on a wild hunt for you across the Montana countryside. Anything else I can help you with today, little brother?”

“There’s no time for arguing,” Joseph interjected, sounding almost tired now. “Quiet, now.”

From their vantage point, they had a clear view of Elliot. The blonde was yelling something to garner attention, to lure people out, and there was some movement through the trees that blocked off the camp up the road. He could see her start to walk farther up, and then stop, hesitating.

“Someone’s coming,” Jacob said, peering carefully through the scope.

Tentative bodies drifted down the road, breaking the treeline: though John could not see Ase’s strange, lithe form anywhere among them, he could _hear_ what he thought was certainly her voice, saying something to Elliot, who had her hands up carefully to show that she was weapon-free as best she could.

The movement that he thought might be the Swedish woman stopped just before the treeline. _Come on,_ John thought, taking in a breath, _come on, you fucking bitch, come out here._

It was someone else that stepped forward from the protection of the tree line. It was Ase’s man, the tall, broad-shouldered ginger, though he too looked unarmed. John tried not to think about how easily he had nearly disposed of them with only his hands, last time.

The man made it to Elliot, gesturing for her to come forward, to close the last foot of distance between them herself; she did as he bid, straying to her right, feigning innocence. John knew what she was doing: leaving room for Jacob to make a shot.

“That’s not her,” John hissed. 

“Yes, I’m not fucking blind.” Jacob’s voice was sharp but steady. “She’s leaning for me. Who is he?”

“Her—right-hand man, or something. I don’t think you should take...”

John’s voice trailed off. The man had stopped Elliot, snagging her wrist—which looked tiny in his hand—and said something to her that did not look pleasant.

“I think I should,” Jacob muttered, shifting the rifle.

“Jacob—” John began, sensing the way his eldest brother’s muscles tensed, ready.

Elliot was saying something to him. She paused, just briefly, and John saw her head tilt down; she saw it, first, and then the ginger looked down at his chest just as Jacob was lining up his shot. 

The incriminating red dot gave it away. The man’s head shot up and locked on them instantly, and before Jacob could pull the trigger, he’d twisted Elliot around and pulled her right against his chest, his hand gripping the pillar of her throat.

John’s stomach plummeted. He heard, as though in a last-ditch effort, Elliot shout _his_ name: and he didn’t know if it was because she wanted help or if she wanted someone to take the shot anyway. He didn’t know if either of those options was more comforting than the other. 

The man had shifted her so that the red dot now lay directly over her chest, pinning her, and Jacob did not pull away from the scope. Even from this distance, John could see the wicked grin splitting across his expression.

“Do not fucking shoot,” John hissed, “ _Jacob_ —do not _fucking_ shoot—”

For sure, now, he heard her voice. " _John_ ," she said, desperately, his name choked in her throat by the grip of the Swedish man bruising her skin.

“There’s a good chance it would hit him and kill him,” Jacob insisted, his finger hovering over the trigger. “They’re goading us. This is the perfect opportunity to—”

“You _fuck_ ,” John seethed. “Joseph, tell him not to shoot!”

Joseph was silent, his jaw set lightly and his gaze fixed on the scene before them; Elliot, struggling to breathe, while the man began to make his way back to the treeline with her body shielding him. For the first time since Elliot had become a problem of theirs, John saw his older brother take time to consider whether or not he _really_ needed her alive or not.

“Killing a right-hand man would be—”

“The plan was to _let her get taken in,_ ” John snapped. “Not to fucking shoot through her to get to some nobody!”

“That was _before_ they knew we tried to trick them,” Jacob insisted. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, little brother—”

“Leave it.” Joseph’s voice was final, and sharp. It seemed his brother was bringing an end to fights like this more and more often. “They won’t kill her, or the others. They want her for something. If you shoot through her, we’ll lose our one person on the inside.”

Jacob looked, for one split second, like he might willfully disobey Joseph’s final ruling on the matter. The hard lines of the eldest Seed’s face sharpened, steeling, before he finally flipped the safety on the rifle and straightened up.

A swift, hot breeze drifted through, picking up dust along the dirt road, and right as the shade of the treeline began, the man stopped. John could see Elliot squirming against his grip, her fingers grasping at his wrist and hands, scratching as she gasped for air: but he was immovable, and his attention wasn’t on her, anyway.

It was on them—where he thought they might be. He lifted his hand, thumb up, and two fingers out in the shape of a gun, pointed it at them, and mimicked a single gunshot.

Jacob was seething, the emotion rolling off of him in waves. “The _fucking gall_ —”

But John wasn’t listening anymore. He felt like he was going to throw up. This was exactly what he’d been worried about happening—and here it was, laid out before him, a feast spoiled rotten by reality. He couldn’t get the sound of the way she’d called for him, _desperately,_ like he was the last safeguard she had left.

And yet again, he had failed her. Her, and Faith, and sure, while he was at it, he could stick Joey Hudson’s name on the list; and didn't that mean he'd failed Joseph, too?

John came to a stand. “I have to go in,” he said, assertively, drawing both sets of eyes from his brothers now. “They know, now, and—they think Elliot is a big threat, so if there’s a chance she’ll put up a fight they’ll drug the fuck out of her. I should go in, and Jacob can watch my back, because—”

 _Because I don’t trust anyone else to get this done the way it needs to be._ The thought auto-completed itself in his brain, but the words didn’t come, and it didn’t look like Jacob nor Joseph expected it out of him.

“John,” Joseph said, “are you sure you want to do that?”

“Faith is our sister,” John replied, “and didn’t you say that’s who I was? Ever-giving?”

The man hesitated, just for a second; the sound of chatter below, and Elliot’s furious voice rising as she presumably was given more room to breathe, echoed in the air.

“Yes,” Joseph said at last, relenting. “We did.”

John nodded, turning and making his way down the slope. He kept thinking of the way Elliot had said his name, because it wasn’t the first time she had done that; in the van, too, his had been the first she’d said.

And he couldn’t stop thinking of Ase’s man, either, and the way he’d wielded her with ease, the way he’d grinned when he’d spotted them, the way his hand gripped Elliot’s throat like he’d choke her to death right there if he’d gotten the chance.

 _No,_ John thought furiously as the truck came into sight, _that won’t do at all._


	10. how large the teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't do drugs, kids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter took quite a while to get around (thank you, writer's block), but it's here! And a spooky update, just in time for October, too! I would like to mention that this chapter includes quite a bit more gristle than usual, so if gore bothers you, this is probably not the chapter for you. Additional warnings include mentions of sexual assault (not in detail, but it is pretty heavily implied, and if you want to skip over that it's only in the first blurb) and forced drug use. Yes, Elliot is hallucinating basically this entire chapter. What's real?? What isn't??? The world may never know.
> 
> I pulled a lot of inspiration from a LOT of medias/myths, so if you think you know what it is please message me on my tumblr @proudspires and let me know!! I would love to see if any of it comes through in my writing the way I want it to!
> 
> Special thanks to my lovely Starcrier, who has been a true homie throughout my wrestling with this chapter, and all of the lovelies here on AO3 and on tumblr who have sent in their feedback, chatted with me, and just all in all provided me with the support and inspiration I really needed to get this chapter done! I probably sound like a broken record by now, but the fact that I have managed to write this many chapters at all after finishing my first chaptered fic in a VERY long time just a few months ago is insane to me and certainly would not have happened without y'all.
> 
> Okay, sappy notes over. Enjoy! Thank y'all so much again!

She is twenty-four, and she cries under the tent of blankets that Joey has made for them.

It feels like she is seventeen, again, in a little fort that they make, but there are key differences: they are in Elliot’s apartment in the city, and Joey’s face is somber, and in the dark Elliot can feel the guttural, gut-wrenching grief sounds shaking her down to her skeleton.

Blanket tents were never for crying in, before. They were never a place to say, between gasping breaths, that she didn’t know why she let a man that she trusted touch her even when she didn’t want him to. How can she? If someone has never experienced the paralyzing fear of being _completely out of control_ , of being _helpless,_ how could it ever make sense?

Elliot knows that it doesn’t. She knows that Joey doesn’t understand completely, not really, and that it hurts her feelings that Elliot flinches when she moves too quickly, and that it stings to say the name of the man she had been dating—that his name tastes sour, like a venom, on her tongue now—and that when Joey tells her that she needs to tell someone what he did, it draws a noise of agony out of her not unlike the way an animal trapped sounds.

She does not sleep that night, or the next night, or the next, and finally when she is tired enough to be worn down she goes to a therapist. She has to, Joey says, or she will never get a job working with the law in Hope County, and Elliot knows she’s right so she does.

There are a lot of things that the therapist says. _Trauma_ hits her the hardest. It blinks, a neon sign above her head, assigned to her so that all will know: that she is Trauma, that she has it, that it sits in her bones and makes a home out of her. _Is that all I will ever be?_ She wonders. _Trauma? Is that all that I have, now?_

Each day is a series of motions, one after the other: waking up, getting up, standing and walking and breathing and existing, all the time. Each of those motions exhausts her. She files a restraining order; she goes to therapy; she takes the sleep medication but that is all she wants to take because otherwise she will feel too much unlike herself. She finishes her training with a clean bill of health from the doctor and her therapist and she packs her apartment, which hurts worse than maybe anything else, because each book and blanket and trinket packed away is a constant reminder of the person who had been there, who had stolen her safety from her in the very place that she was supposed to always feel safe.

But Hope County is waiting for her, and that is what she will take comfort in: that there is always a place for her, there.

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It was the worst-case scenario. In any other universe, in any other life, she would not have let herself be convinced to approach an enemy unarmed. Not even John’s flippant confidence that she could make a weapon out of anything instilled in her the idea that things would be alright, in the end.

That had been the only thought that could keep her going. _Once I get Joey and get the hell out of Dodge, everything will be okay,_ her brain would say. _Get Joey, get out. That’s all there is to it._

But that _wasn’t_ all there was to it, anymore, and she knew that; she knew it while her heart hammered in her chest, while her skin itched and burned where the redhead had touched her like he was dripping in acid, while the blood rushed through her head in a violent tidal wave that made her feel like she was going to puke. They had stuffed a wet cloth into her mouth and hauled her away, out of sight of the Seeds, and now she sat—alone, tied, the cloth spit out onto the floor of the cabin they had left her in.

She was somehow both unaware of how much time was actually passing and fully confident that it had only been a half an hour; if she moved her head too fast (which was to say, at all) the world wobbled and swam around her. Elliot finally relented to burying her face into her knees and closing her eyes to try and stop the swimming nausea.

The door clicked open. She saw Ase, first, and behind her loomed the redhead. The woman was taller up close than Elliot would have thought—probably bridging five foot ten—which made the redhead _much_ taller than she had thought, too.

 _I could kill her,_ she thought furiously, through the strange haze that had fallen over her. _If I got my hands on her, I could._

“Hello, _mor,_ ” Ase said. Elliot _saw_ the warmth blooming in her voice, like an aura welling up out of her, red and searing; the realization that they had certainly dipped the cloth in something that would ultimately be _worse_ than just dying-by-chemical-ingestion hit her hard, sending her heart fluttering in a panic. It was the same brand of panic she had felt when John had found her in the field; wildly out of her control, as if she were being puppeted by something else, something larger than her.

The redhead closed the door behind them, and Ase closed what little distance that remained between the two of them, crouching in front of her. Elliot tried her best to muddle through the panic and muster up some hostility, but it was hard, when it felt like the floor was both sturdy and melting underneath her.

“Fuck you,” Elliot managed out, her mouth feeling like it was full of cotton balls. It didn’t seem as though her words had any effect on the blonde, and for a second she panicked, wondering if she had even said anything at all in the first place or if it had just been in her imagination.

“You left Kian with a few nasty bites, didn’t you?” Ase asked, her voice welling with amusement. “I did not want to stuff a tea-soaked washcloth into your mouth, but we couldn’t have you drawing any more blood.”

Elliot’s gaze slid to the redhead— _Kian,_ she thought venomously—and the movement of her eyeballs felt like they were hitching unsteadily in her skull. So they _had_ drugged her, again. What the fuck was it with cults and drugging people?

The woman reached for her, and instinctively, Elliot flinched. The gesture came a few seconds too late; the drug in her system, whatever it was they had soaked the cloth in, was already starting to wear her down.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Elliot said, as Ase untied the rope around her feet and then her hands, “if you want me to stop biting people.”

“I am not worried,” Ase replied sweetly. “You’re already looking more docile by the minute, _mor._ ”

Elliot swallowed thickly; to do so took concentrated effort. “That isn’t my name.”

“It isn’t a name at all,” the blonde agreed unhelpfully, tossing the ropes to the side and coming to a stand. She smoothed her hands across the dark fabric of her dress, and then extended a long, elegant hand. “Now, do you want to see your friend?”

She felt her heart stutter painfully in her chest at the woman’s words. After having been tricked and toyed with by John, it was strange to think she was finally in the home stretch that she had been trying to reach these last few days; that finally, _finally_ , all of her toil and trouble was bringing her back to Joey.

Briefly, the idea that she could take Joey and run--leave the Seeds to their own devices--fluttered through her brain. Leave the Seeds to clean up this mess on their own. Hopefully, the Resistance had already bolted out of Hope County and were well on their way elsewhere. If she grabbed Joey and got out--if she could get in touch with law enforcement _outside_ of Hope County--

Elliot stared at the Swede's hand and tried to gather her thoughts up in one place. It felt too much like they had become marbles, spilling out of her hands every time she tried to focus. She took a breath and then forced herself to a stand, blatantly ignoring Ase's outstretched hand. Just the act of using her legs to stand felt a little like being on stilts; the world lurched and ground to a watery stop around her, and only confirmed, infuriatingly, what Ase had said--that she was in no shape to bolt, or fight for that matter.

"Come along, then," Ase said pleasantly, taking a few steps away from her. Those few steps made it look as though the ground stretched out for miles between them, and her stomach twisted. The blonde looked at her over her shoulder and smiled.

"Kian, help our friend," she murmured. The redhead stepped forward and reached for her, ever obedient to his master, and Elliot immediately gritted her teeth and took an unsteady step backward.

"Kian, don’t," she bit out, mimicking Ase’s honeyed tone as much as she could. And then, less sweet: "If you touch me again, you'll walk away with a lot more than a bite mark, fuckhead."

Kian flashed a smile that felt like a snake against her skin and gestured for her to go on ahead. "Go on, then."

Just being in his proximity again made her skin crawl; it felt still like his hand was around her throat, the heat of his breath against the shell of her ear. Even in the dizzying haze that had settled over her, she felt her heart leap uneasily into her throat at the memory.

Before she realized what was happening, Elliot's feet had carried her out around Kian and out of the cabin, trailing the beacon that Ase had become, a strange green aura undulating around her. _I hate this_ , she thought, watching the way the trees around her shifted and bled into the night sky.

"How—how long was I in there?" She asked, falling into an uneasy pace next to Ase.

"A few hours," she replied, looking over at her. "Felt shorter?"

 _Yes,_ Elliot thought, but the word didn't come to her mouth. The ground slid under her feet; the world around her pulsed in time with her breaths, stretching and cinching in equal parts until she found herself standing in front of another of the cabins. In the distance, the sound of the lake water lapping at the shore echoed over and over in her head.

Ase pushed the door to the cabin open, and inside sat Joey Hudson.

She looked tired, days of exhaustion sitting heavy on her face, a dark shadow of sleeplessness and makeup both ringing her eyes. Joey had always been pretty, and now was no exception; the brunette, though her clothes were dirty and her eyes fluttered with tiredness, was just as lovely as she always was. The sight of her had Elliot’s head and heart swimming with emotion, rising up thick and high in her throat until she thought she might come unglued right there, in front of a psychotic woman.

But with the feeling of being on a seesaw unseating her nonstop, and the desperate, _aching_ reminder of the person she had been missing all along, Elliot didn’t think almost anything about Ase. As far as she was concerned, in that moment, the woman ceased to exist; the same choking feeling that she’d felt when Jerome had said, _you can tell me if it’s not okay._ A relinquishing. A lifting of her burden. _You don’t have to Atlas this thing alone._

“Joey,” Elliot said, the woman’s name coming out of her mouth hoarse and heavy. Joey’s eyes fluttered tiredly and she mustered up the closest thing to a smile.

“Hey, El,” Joey replied. As Elliot crossed the space between them and immediately crouched to kneel in front of her, the smile warmed into something more genuine. In an effort of lightness, the brunette said, “You should have called, I would have cleaned up.”

Elliot _felt_ the soft, wrecked little sound, so close to a sob, more than she heard it; it was a choked almost-laugh, her hands fluttering absently as though unsure of where to land. “I tried,” she managed out, as thinking and speaking became harder, her jaw stiff and unyielding. “I _tried_ , Joey—”

Joey nodded and said, “I know.”

“I will leave you,” Ase said lightly from the door, “but, Elliot? You only have a short time before you become fully open to the influence. I would drink some water.”

The blonde turned, leaving and closing the door behind her, leaving just the two of them there. By then, even while the world swam around her, and she thought she could see little sparks of orange light flying off of Joey, she threw her arms around the brunette and hugged her tightly. It took a minute for her to realize that she was crying--happy, relieved tears, the kind that came suddenly and without warning.

“I was so worried about you,” Elliot murmured between sniffles, pulling back and immediately searching for restraints. There were none. Unlike John Seed’s version of Joey’s captivity, no duct tape covered her mouth, nothing bound her hands together; she was just sitting in there—probably knowing well enough that running would have been a worse idea. “I thought John had you, and then he got me, and then he said he’d pawned you off to Faith, and—”

“Slow down,” Joey laughed, the sound not quite reaching deep enough in the cavity of her chest to be a real one. “You have crazy eyes, El.”

“They gave me something,” she explained, pressing the heel of her palm against her eye. “They did it once before, but it was stronger then.”

Joey handed her the bottle of water she had been nursing, uncapping it for her. “They gave it to me too, once,” she replied. “But not again. Maybe I didn’t give them the response they were looking for. Elliot, these people are--there’s something _really_ wrong here. They keep talking about this thing in the woods, asking if I’ve seen it...”

Elliot took a big swallow of the water, shifting on her knees and then taking another. She felt absolutely parched—the water tasted a little funny, but she wasn’t sure if she trusted her own sense of taste right in that moment anyway. “We have to get out,” she said. Whatever the cult believed in or practiced didn’t matter; what mattered was getting the fuck away from them.

She was certain she could hear Ase’s voice just outside. She lowered her voice, trying her hardest to make sure she was whispering, “We were hoping to—I mean, _I_ was hoping to—the plan went wrong, Joey, I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But we can still get out.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Joey asked. “Sheriff Whitehorse, and Burke, and…”

Her voice trailed off absently, and Elliot could feel the brunette’s eyes on her. She hesitated, taking Joey’s hands in her own before she replied, “I don’t know.”

“Then who is ‘we’? Jerome and the others?”

“No, Jo, it’s--”

The door clicked open behind them, echoing once, twice, three times in Elliot’s head before she turned to see Ase looming in the doorway. Long, dark, the sharp angle of her jawline and the high slope of her cheeks making her look more severe, more beautiful than before.

“It is time for you to see,” she said, her voice light. “You will have time with your friend later.”

“What about Faith?” Elliot asked, struggling to her feet. “I want to see that Faith is okay too. That you haven’t—”

“After,” Ase replied, her voice startlingly ironclad.

“Joey comes with me.” She tried again, tried to force her voice to firmness, to assertion. But Ase only smiled, tranquil now despite the hardness of her voice. She crossed the small space between them, looming in Elliot’s vision--eclipsing all other light, taking away all sense of anything else outside of her.

“She stays,” Ase replied, not unkindly. “This is only for you to see.”

She crossed the distance of the cabin between them and reached for Elliot, taking her hand. The contact made Elliot’s skin buzz. She was so tired--so tired of this stretching and pulling of herself, so tired of the way their drugs made everything somehow _more_ than what she could handle and forced her to handle it anyway.

“Joey—”

Elliot turned back to look at the brunette, reaching for her as Ase pulled her along; Joey had pulled herself to a stand and was trying to follow after them, saying something like, _it’s okay, I don’t mind coming, really_ , more practiced at polite coercion than Elliot was. Before Joey could reach the door after them, Elliot saw the broad, tall form of Kian blocking out the doorway, saying something to Joey in Swedish.

“Hey! Leave her alone, you fuck—”

Ase pulled on her hand, _hard_ , yanking her until she was stumbling after her sleek figure. Out in the night, where the air was chilly with an early-Autumn coldness and Elliot could see her breath floating out of her mouth, she almost felt at peace for a second. Everything was still. Incredibly still, the way the surface of a pond was before a stone landed.

One step at a time, she walked her to the edge of the campground. They broke the treeline, hand-in-hand, until they could see Sacred Skies Lake stretched out below them. Elliot craned her neck to try and see the cabin where they were keeping Joey, but the trees blocked most of her vision of the campground.

“Look, there,” Ase said, interrupting her thoughts. She gestured down at the far treeline. When Elliot turned to look, she saw nothing; only darkness in the still woods. Too still, she thought now—still in the way the forest was when a predator had arrived and all the prey had fled.

The lake rippled below them, and then smoothed out, dark and clear as glass. She tried desperately to _see_ \--really see, not just what the drugs were making her see, as though she could brute force her way through the barrage of sensations overwhelming her.

And then: _“Hey!”_

It was a woman’s voice, thrown from somewhere down by the lake. Elliot felt apprehension crawling across her skin. She didn’t know why it was making her nervous, but she strained to listen for it again.

The voice said again, _“Hey, Elli!”_ and she felt her stomach drop. It was her mother’s voice, the sweet Georgia drawl that her mother had always sported, calling to her from the woods. _Calling for her._

“Mama?” Elliot managed out, her voice thick and hoarse and bubbling before it even left her mouth. She felt Ase’s eyes on her, inquisitive, but all she could think about was _I have to get her out of here, what is she doing here? Why isn’t she with the others?_ , so louder this time, she went, “Mama, I’m here!”

She took a step forward. It was Ase’s hand that stopped her, a gentle shake of her head. Elliot looked back at the woman for some kind of answer, but her expression was empty of anything that might have been helpful; on it was only the serene, delicate smile of a woman enthralled.

There was a stretch of silence. Something dark shifted in the trees. Something big, rippling leaves and branches as it moved. 

And then: _“Mama?”_

It was _her_ voice.

It called, again, “ _Mama, I’m here?”_ , and the pitch and timbre felt the same as her own voice, like she’d shouted into an echoed canyon, but it was _wrong._ It was _all wrong._ It sounded like something trying her out, feeling out the way she sounded. _Practicing._

The air bubbled around her with some kind of emotion. It popped, pulled tight, stretching over her vision like saran wrap, until it hurt to keep her eyes open, until she thought desperately that all she wanted to do was close her eyes—but she couldn’t. She had to stay awake, stay clear, stay conscious. For herself, for Joey and Boomer and for—

( _Whether you like it or not, you and I are on the same side._ )

It called, from deep in the treeline beyond the lake, again. _“I’m here!”_ The voice pitched and pulled between words, like whatever it was kept trying to get the exact cadence of her words—trying her out, tasting. Sliding beneath her skin.

“What the fuck is that?” Elliot whispered. Ase smiled serenely at her, and gave her hand a squeeze.

“Look harder,” Ase murmured. “You will see It.”

She took a step forward, her heart thundering in her chest, trying to see beyond the utter stillness of the forest. Nothing moved; nothing breathed in time with her, anymore; where the drumbeat of the world had once felt it was intrinsically tied to her, she was now cut off from it, in a cold, dead space somewhere beyond.

Something in the trees shifted again, and rumbled.

“It has been waiting for you,” Ase murmured, coming up behind Elliot. Her voice was silky, warm, spinning a web around and around her until it made her feel—

_Safe._

“What has?” Elliot managed out, swallowing thickly.

“We call it the Father,” she said. “It talks to us, when we are open to it. In voices we recognize, in the voices of our loved ones, so that it does not scare us.”

Her hands were on Elliot’s shoulders, gently squeezing, and she thought she was going to throw up. The trees in the distance warped and bent, swallowed up by something big and dark and _humming_ , the vibration of it melting around her, thrumming beneath her skin.

“It tells us, Elliot, that the end of the world is here. Your own Eden’s Gate knows it, do they not?” Ase’s voice was more urgent now; Elliot didn’t have time to think about how she said _your own Eden’s Gate_ before she was plunging on. “They know it. The only difference between _us_ and _them_ is that we serve It, that we help to usher it in. Just as we once took, so do we give back to It—life, cyclic and infinite. You know it. You understood the words, in the flowers, didn’t you?”

_My heart aches for you._

_Be gentle with me._

_I come soon._

“You’re fucking crazy,” she said, the words coming out slick with panic, spilling out of her before she could stop them. Her shoulders scrunched up to her jaw to try and brush Ase’s hands off of her. “You’re insane. You—crazy bitch—”

They were John’s words, not her own, but it was all she could muster up; the woman’s face remained light and serene, turning Elliot to look at her now.

“It waits for you,” she insisted, her voice wobbling around Elliot like the reverb of a bass drum. “I told you that you would always come back to us. I knew when I saw your color.” Her gaze swept over Elliot, almost affectionate. “White, in perfect balance.”

“Stop touching me,” Elliot managed out, pushing Ase’s hands weakly off of her. The strange thrumming persisted under her skin, a violent cacophony as she tried to block out the sound of her own voice beckoning her from the woods. _Hey! Mama, I’m here!_ It said, begging her to follow, begging her to investigate.

Breathing became harder. It felt like she was gulping in lungfuls of water, eeking out whatever oxygen she could, but no matter where she looked to try and get Ase out of her mind she only saw dark trees; bending and curling and pulsing in time with her heartbeat.

“ _Mor,_ ” Ase said, taking Elliot’s face in her hands like a lover would, “Mother, that’s what you are. For us, to us, while we serve It.”

“Fuck you,” she spit out, but her voice cracked instead, the fear welling up inside of her like a tidal wave. “I’ll—”

Ase shook her head. “I told you, it is a cycle,” she whispered, pressing their foreheads together. “Wherever you go, wherever you run, It will wait for you. It waits for us all, Elliot, and it will have you. As It gives, so too, does it take.”

She opened her mouth to respond when the loud crack of a gunshot echoed just a few feet away. Ase’s head snapped around viciously, her hand still gripping Elliot’s face with a firm, unforgiving hold; even in the dark, even with the drug wreaking havoc on her system, Elliot recognized the filthy backwater whooping of Peggies.

The flash of headlights through the trees suddenly brought everything back to life, the sound roaring in through Elliot’s head like someone had flicked the mute button back off again.

She turned to look back at the lake. Whatever had been lurking there was gone, now. The sound of feet hitting the dirt, shouted words in a foreign language, and the sweeping realization that they might yet still get out of here sent her heart hammering.

Ase pulled on her, _hard_ , until she was stumbling after her. She craned her neck to try and see if she recognized anyone, to see if she could see one familiar face, but where the gunshots were echoing was already far enough that she could only see the brief flicker of headlights.

The door to the cabin opened. Warm light flooded her vision, splintering behind her eyelids as Ase pushed her inside and said, with a sudden and violent amount of poison, “ _Stay._ ”

Everything felt like she was swimming in molasses; each movement harder than the last, each breath taking more and more of her concentration. The door slammed shut. In the time it had taken Elliot to will her venom into existence, Ase had released her hand and swept out of the cabin, leaving her alone with Joey. Through the curtains, she could see dark shapes shifting and melting, one into another, and she took in a stuttering breath.

“Are you okay?” Joey asked immediately, reaching for her. “What did she say? When they did it to me, she kept asking if I could see—but it was just trees, out there, to me. El, look at me.”

“We have to get out,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, cracking with panic. “We have to get the fuck out of here, Joey. These people are— _so_ much worse than Eden’s Gate—”

Voices catapulted in volume outside, tires squealing and doors slamming. All of it felt too loud, even with a wall between herself and the violence—like someone had cracked the volume up to one-hundred and then pulled the knob off.

“ _What_ the fuck? Are those Peggies?” Joey whispered, glancing out the window. “I do not want to be in the crossfire of two fucking cults. Elliot, when are the others coming? Where are they?”

Elliot swallowed thickly. As the sounds of cacophony increased outside, reminding her that she had made something like a deal with the devil, she took in a deep breath. She didn’t have time to think about the woods, or whatever it was she _thought_ she’d seen in there, or the way that Ase had gripped her face and said, _It waits for you._

“Right,” she said, trying to push those thoughts somewhere far down and out of sight. “So, listen, Joey, about the others, they’re—gone.”

Joey stared at her. “Gone?” she repeated. Horror started to creep into her tone. “Like—dead—?”

“No, I mean—they’re gone. Or they should be,” she added quickly, heading towards the window to look out, “I told them to evacuate Hope County when I ran into these crazies the first time.”

“Okay,” the brunette began, slowly, “so… before, when you said _we_ and—that you had a plan…”

“Right,” Elliot replied, her head swimming a little. “Yeah, a plan. Remember when I said that John got me—”

Joey shook her head, not because she didn’t remember but because she already saw where this was going. “Elliot—”

“—and then he told me that he pawned you off to Faith, and—well, Joey,” Elliot managed, “there wasn’t any way I was going to lose one iota of a chance of getting you back.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Joey groaned, pressing her hands to her eyes. “Fuck _,_ Elliot, please tell me you didn’t—”

“Well, look, Joey—”

Something rattled the door. It struck Elliot with a note of panic that they had been locked in, and she didn’t know if in that moment she felt _worse_ to know that they had closed them in or if it was a comfort, considering the chaos that was probably ensuing outside.

 _Worse,_ something in her head said. _It always feels worse, to be trapped._

Someone banged on the door three times, and then through it came a blissfully familiar voice: “Elliot? Are you in there?”

Elliot felt a wave of relief wash over her. She never thought she would see the day where hearing John Seed’s voice would bring her relief, let alone _comfort:_ but it did.

She hurried to the door, rattling the doorknob for good measure. “Yes,” she replied quickly, the words coming out a bit hoarse, so she tried again, louder this time: “Yeah, John, I’m in here. Can you break the window?”

“I’ll do you one better. Get back from the door.”

She did as he said, reaching for Joey just mere seconds before she heard a concussive splintering of wood and metal from the other side of the door, which swung open shortly thereafter. She was not wrong to think that the outside was chaos; she could hear it more clearly now, but almost none of it mattered, because John Seed was standing there with a shotgun in his arms.

“You could have just broken the window open,” Elliot managed out, around the complicated mess of feelings welling up inside of her and her tongue feeling two sizes too big in her mouth. “Idiot.”

“That’s a lot of attitude you’re giving your rescuer,” John replied, cocking the shotgun with an affirmative _click, click_ , the plastic shell clattering onto the front porch of the cabin. “What are you standing around for? Let’s get moving, hellcat.”

“I’m _not_ going with _him,”_ Joey bit out venomously. “That _psycho_ kidnapped me and held me hostage!”

“Oh, Hudson, that was so long ago,” John drawled, glancing over his shoulder at the erupting chaos behind him. “Keep up with the times, won’t you? Elliot and I are partners, now.”

It shouldn’t have felt dirty, hearing John Seed say that to Joey—because they _were_ partners, because he didn’t have to come for her if he had Faith already and he did anyway—but it did. It felt traitorous.

“You fuckhead!” Joey snapped. “If any of our friends are dead, it’s _your_ fault!”

“Okay!” Elliot announced, her voice high and panicked. It felt weird to be the middleman, the one demanding that everyone be calm. “Okay, let’s just—everyone shut the fuck up, okay? I am hours into a fucking drug trip and there is no time to debate the moral ethics of teaming up with a cult leader to escape _another_ cult leader!”

Joey’s jaw clenched as she stared at John, her eyes narrowing, Elliot’s hand still firmly gripped in hers. She looked at Elliot for a moment, and then—

“Fine,” she ground out.

“Great,” John replied.

“Awesome,” Elliot said, taking in a deep breath. “Joey, is there any medicine in the cabinet? We should grab it.” She paused, looking at John for a moment, her gaze sweeping over him. He was unmarked. Unscarred. Splattered with blood, but it doesn’t bother her—rather, assured her. “Did you—did you get Faith?”

He watched Joey let go of her hand and cross the room to gather up what few things she had—the half-drank water bottle, some pills from the cabinet in the bathroom that may or may not have expired, Elliot thought—and then he said, “First thing. She’s waiting for us down by the lake.”

“Good,” Elliot murmured, nodding and swallowing thickly. For a second, a strange silence stretched between them, and then John took a few steps into the cabin and he reached for her.

“They didn’t hurt you?” he asked, his voice dropping in volume, his fingers brushing her jaw and tilting her face to get a look at her neck where Kian’s fingers had dug into her skin.

She felt her lashes flutter, the feeling of his fingers skimming the still-tender spots sending strange vibrations rattling through her skull. Her skin didn’t crawl the same way it had when Kian had grabbed her, but heat did bloom in her face, and she felt it crawling all the way down her neck. His gaze darted over her face, lingering on her mouth for a heartbeat in their close proximity.

“Stupid,” she muttered, brushing his hand off. “Of course they didn’t. You should be checking on Ase’s little boy-pet.”

John grinned, the expression drenched in something close to pride. “I should have known.”

“Let’s go.” It was Joey’s voice that interrupted, slicing right through the moment, dousing out the flames Elliot felt in her chest. The brunette grabbed her hand and pulled her through the doorway, out into the cold, black night—a night swelling and vibrating with sound now, no longer ruptured by a stillness that sat like condensation in her lungs but _noise_ , bubbling and sparking in the air like electricity.

Joey stopped, ducking and pulling Elliot back behind the next door cabin when the sound of gunfire pierced through the night. John slipped just ahead of them and said, “Hey, maybe let the guy with the gun go first?”

“Maybe the guy with the gun should be covering our asses instead,” Joey retorted. She pushed the water bottle into Elliot’s free hand and nudged her ahead. “C’mon, get a move on, Elli.”

John glanced back at her, and his expression said, _Elli, huh? That’s cute._ Elliot glared at him, but there was a lightness in her when she did—it didn’t matter, that infuriating way he cocked his grin at her, like he was equal parts pleased with himself and proud of her ferocity. It didn’t matter, because she could see the hilltop where Ase had shown her the lake, and once they got down they were home free, and John Seed could feel however he wanted to about her.

She had Joey. She would be free to go, and leave the Seeds behind her.

Shouting clipped through the air in the distance, and John glanced back behind them, exhaling through his mouth. No doubt the members of Eden’s Gate that were creating this diversion (and that’s what it _was_ , a diversion) were getting mowed down, obliterated by the organized, methodical killing that the Family was capable of.

Elliot glanced back. Through the gaps in the trees, she could see bodies dropping and crumpling against the ground, pulled and yanked out of trucks that had been driven right up against the clearing. _Lambs to the slaughter,_ she thought hazily, her fingers slipping out of Joey’s hand. _What am I, then?_

 _Wherever you go, wherever you run, It will wait for you._

Someone screamed. She saw the light of it, pinching off of them in sharp, rapid bursts of yellow, swimming through the air until disappearing into the night sky above her where the boughs of the trees stretched impossibly far. Each massacre, each bloody slaughter ending life afterlife, the residue filtering through the air in ghostly wisps of color.

_As It gives, so too, does it take._

“El,” John said, taking a step down the hill, “we have to go.”

“Joey?” she asked. “She--”

“On her way down the hill, already.” He reached for her, hand outstretched, ignoring that she seemed to keep losing time. “Let’s go.”

Elliot paused at the top of the hill; her gaze darted, without much thought, to the treeline— _it’s nothing,_ she thought to herself, _I just want to check._

Something lurched in the treeline. Big, breaking and snapping trees, and Elliot felt a breath slip out of her, violently departing her lungs.

“John,” she began, uneasily, “I don’t think I can—”

“You’re fine, El, just keep—”

Joey called something from down below them; irritation flickered across John’s expression, and he turned away from her to take another step down the hill and call back, “Yeah, we’re—just sit tight down there, Hudson…”

Elliot took an unsteady step backward, and just as she did, she felt someone grab her arm.

“Not you,” Ase hissed at her, yanking her hard until she stumbled back from the hillside. There was a frantic, wild energy about her now, infernal, bubbling up out of the calm, polished veneer. “Not you, _mor,_ not this time. You get to stay and see what you’ve done.”

Elliot felt cold earth and pine needles beneath palms, prickling through her jeans as she hit the ground. Her stomach lurched; she thought she was going to throw up, but when she turned around to see Ase stalking towards her, a _different_ kind of nausea welled up in her. For the first time in a long time, Elliot felt real, cold fear in her, searing through her like a venom.

She wanted to call for John, or Joey, or anyone—but her jaw felt like it was wrenched tight, and violent sparks of light were rushing off of Ase right in front of her eyes.

“You’re insane,” she managed out unsteadily, the heat in her voice whipped away by the panic inside of her.

“I told you,” Ase said, taking two steps closer to her, “no matter where you go, you will _always—_ ”

Something loud and concussive echoed. Elliot heard flesh and sinew tear until the pressure of something greater; the arterial spray of it peppered her vision, splattering across her face until the world looked like it was doused in red film.

Ase’s expression went slack as she sank to her knees in front of Elliot, and in the dark of the night, Elliot could see the blood splatter of the gaping wound in Ase’s stomach just before she slumped forward. She wasn’t dead, yet—as John took a step forward, cocking the shotgun again, Elliot thought about the way Ase’s stomach had been spilling out of her.

“John?” she asked, feeling very small and very far away. A part of her brain was vaguely aware of the sounds of the firefight echoing in the night, of voices shouting closer to her, but she couldn’t think about any of that. All she could think about is the way John was looking at her, the shotgun propped up and ready to fire again, though he didn’t. Not yet.

Something brushed her hand. Elliot looked back and saw Ase’s glassy eyes, her fingers brushing Elliot’s, reaching for her. Blood dripped out of her mouth, and the green light that Elliot had thought she’d seen around her now was beginning to dim. Her lips parted, her gaze flickering absently over her face.

“ _Do you see?”_

Ase interlaced their fingers. The earth below her stretched out, pulling her, sweeping like a neverending conveyor belt that only managed to make her sicker.

Another concussive blast muted out the world. She heard nothing but the ringing in her ears as the back of Ase’s head caved in, their eyes locked and their fingers interlaced, like friends. _Like sisters._

“No,” Elliot said, the sound coming out of her like some kind of agonized noise, “no no no—”

Something firm and warm gripped her shoulders. A hand reached up, pushing against her jaw until she was forced to turn her eyes away from Ase’s mouth moving silently.

It was John. Eclipsing her vision, filling it up until there nothing else. John, pulling her to her feet, wiping the blood from her face and saying something—something that she couldn’t hear, her head vibrating with the residue of the shotgun blast that had covered her in gore—pulling her to the hillside, pulling her down.

The world swam and melted around her as John pulled her down the hill, one hand gripping hers and the other steadying her as she stumbled and swayed. She tried to look elsewhere, anywhere that wasn’t _John,_ John who had looked like maybe he was hesitating and then had blown Ase’s head to pieces, but she couldn’t.

At the bottom of the hill, Joey immediately grabbed her away from John. “El? Elli? Are you okay?”

She didn’t know what to say. The feeling of Ase’s fingers reaching for her, interlacing with hers, stuck to her ribs. Elliot thought about the curve of the back of Ase’s head, concave from the shotgun shell, the carmine spray of the woman’s wound coating her face.

“If you want to stand around down here and chit chat, that’s fine.” It was Jacob’s voice. When had Jacob gotten there? _Why_ was he there? She watched him grab Faith’s hand and pull the girl along, heading further down to the lake. “ _We’re_ leaving.”

“When—” Elliot began, still dazed, feeling like the world was becoming a watercolor painting around her. “When did Jacob—”

“Drink some water,” Joey said, holding the water bottle out to her, “and we’ll talk about it later, but right now we need to move, Elli.”

She nodded numbly, clutching Joey’s hand as she started to walk, John’s radiating warmth on the other side of her. Elliot glanced at him through the corner of his eyes for any indication that he felt, at all, _any_ emotion about what he’d just done—but he only looked quietly troubled, his fingers brushing hers as they walked.

He’d said to her, grinning slick, _yours must surely be the sin of wrath_. But she didn’t feel so very wrathful _now_ , Ase’s blood on her face and the world falling apart around her. She watched him, glancing around through the trees, checking the chaos behind them, the slaughterhouse he had led his lambs to.

 _Not this one._ John’s voice, hissing in her ear, as she gasped around lungfuls of water. _This one’s not clean._

John’s hands on either side of her face, gripping, grounding her to the earth when she felt like she was going to float away, when it felt like the earth was slipping out from beneath her feet. John, not grimacing or flinching when her nails dug into his arm to keep her present, to keep her anchored.

 _Which one are you?_ she thought, staring at him until her eyes burned, until he looked over at her inquisitively. _Which John are you?_

John, glowing with pride at Joseph’s praise. John, irritably telling her to smoke a cigarette because he knew from one casual conversation that it would relax her. John, his fingers brushing the skin just below her collarbone, saying _maybe we’ll tattoo it here, just over your heart._ John, calling her a killer.

_By the pricking of my thumbs._


	11. what kind of man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “—it makes the brutal tender, which I’ve since learned is one of your principal gifts.” — Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to start off by saying THANK YOU everyone for your feedback! I was having a real hard time hitting my stride with the last chapter but all of your kind words has given me life. There's some still in these old bones yet. Anyway I'm a clown and I'm sorry this chapter took so long. Joke's on you, it's always clown hour here! Thank you forever and always to Starcrier for being the best proof-reader and somehow managing to make my incoherency readable?? Manageable??? You're an angel and ily!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include: uhhhh blood. There's a lot of mentions of blood and death and what have you. Elliot has a meltdown (surprise). Joseph is creepy (surprise pt. 2 electric boogaloo). People are confused about How To Feel. I don't understand how laws work and so I'm just literally out here trying my best, you know? Don't @ me.
> 
> "What Kind of Man" by Florence + The Machine plays aggressively in the background.
> 
> Come chat w me on tumblr under the same username, @proudspires, I recently figured out how to open my inbox! Which apparently I had never done before!

John had never seen a person’s head blown in with a shotgun, and he wasn’t sure that he really needed to.

Ase’s blood had splattered when Jacob fired the shotgun at what he was sure could be considered point-blank range, the spray of it nearly catching them in the process. But no, it was _mostly_ on Elliot, like she was some Carrie at her first prom, a real tried-and-true Scream Queen.

“I knew you’d find a way to fuck it up,” Jacob said, no absence of venom in his voice as he stepped away from Ase’s dead body like she was nothing—and sure, she _was_ nothing, and John didn’t necessarily have any qualms with getting rid of her (he had blown a shell straight through her spine), but that wasn’t what was making him nauseated.

It was Elliot. Baby-blues eaten away by her pupils, blown wide with hallucinogens, drenched in blood, making a noise something close to a rabbit that thought it was going to die.

He didn’t have the energy to tell Jacob that the blow to her skull had been unnecessary, that there was no way someone could walk away from their entire stomach being blown through by a shotgun. That Jacob’s idea of “fucked up” was greatly, massively warped if he thought that Ase hadn’t been finished after shot number one. Even if he’d _had_ the energy it wouldn’t have mattered, because the next words out of Jacob’s mouth were, “You put Faith at risk going back for her.”

The eldest Seed didn’t need to say what it was he meant; John knew. The words were “you put Faith at risk going back for her”, but what he meant was, _Joseph’s going to be furious when he finds out._

“Get your pet,” Jacob bit out, “and let’s fucking move.”

John’s limbs moved of their own volition, kneeling down in front of Elliot and turning her face away from the grisly scene laid out next to her. If she recognized him, it didn’t show; she trembled, and her eyes never stayed fixed for very long, as though everything in the entire world was assaulting her senses at every second.

“Elliot,” he said, pulling her to her feet as the sound of voices rising in the distance peppered the air, “we have to move.”

Some kind of guttural sorrow welled up and out of her as he pulled her along and down the hill, her feet stumbling. Around them, the night hummed with gunfire and shouting. John was certain that he heard something like grief wracking the air at the hilltop above them, and he couldn’t bring himself to look back, afraid of what he’d see—that redheaded monster of Ase’s bent over her nearly-decapitated corpse, or worse: coming _after them._

He kept one hand on Elliot’s arm and the other out in front of her case she tried to plummet headfirst down the hill—whether by chance or accident—and by the time they had reached the bottom, the strange agony sounds that had tried to burrow out of her had mostly ceased; her gaze was still glassy and dark, and there was an odd sway about her, but she looked only shell-shocked now.

 _Oh,_ John thought, absently, _if that’s all._

Joey’s dark gaze darted between the two of them. He released Elliot to her without a word, his hand dropping from the blonde as Joey fussed over her. Faith swayed dreamily just a few steps away from Joey, humming a song mostly to herself; beyond her, Jacob stood, his arms crossed over his chest while he toted the shotgun in one of his hands, before he apparently got tired of waiting and grabbed Faith’s hand.

“If you want to stand around down here and chit chat, that’s fine,” he said, tugging Faith—clearly still drugged, clearly unaware of the carnage occurring around them—off to the trail that led away from the lake. “ _We’re_ leaving.”

“Jacob—” John started. It was too late. The redhead had set for himself and for Faith a brutal and punishing pace to return them to wherever it was Joseph waited, and though he was loathe to admit it, Jacob was on the right track; pretty soon, the members of Eden’s Gate that had been sent up to wreak havoc on the Family would be dead, and he was certain that once Ase’s death was fully recognized, someone would want revenge.

“Are we going home?” Faith asked, giggling as she toddled after Jacob, barely able to keep herself upright. “That lady said John was going to come and rescue me.”

John’s chest tightened at the sound of her laughter. She was so completely unperturbed by everything—everything she had been through, had seen. He wondered how heavily they’d had to drug her, and if she would even remember half of it come the moment that she sobered up.

He exhaled, glancing at the top of the ridge above them where the lights of the cabins and flashlights and whatever-the-fuck-else those monsters had at their disposal glimmered.

“When,” Elliot said, the word grinding out of her mouth haltingly, “when... did Jacob-”

“Drink some water,” Joey murmured. She uncapped the half-drank water bottle and pushed it into Elliot’s hand and added, “And we’ll talk about it later, but right now we need to move, Elli.”

 _Elli,_ John thought, and felt a faint glimmer of amusement at the absurdity of such a soft, round nickname for a girl who was only sharp edges. Well, but she wasn’t so sharp now, was she? As he led them along the dark trail, her fingers brushing his on occasion, he would glance over at her and find her staring at him like he was a stranger, like she didn’t recognize him. Maybe she didn’t; he wasn’t familiar with the drugs they’d put her on, anyway.

“What the fuck happened up there?” Joey hissed, her hand firmly rooted in Elliot’s as she tugged her along—not unlike the way Jacob was pulling Faith. She had taken the water bottle back when it became apparent Elliot wasn’t interested in it. “Why is Elliot covered in _blood_ —”

“She’s alive,” John snapped, “isn’t that what’s important?”

“I suppose you’ll be wanting a fucking award.”

“Stop it,” Elliot managed out. “Stop arguing. You both are so fucking loud.”

Joey’s lips pressed into a thin line. They ducked into the treeline far below Sacred Skies Camp, picking their way as quickly as they could through the underbrush, but the journey was slow and arduous; guiding Elliot through the trees had, in the last twenty minutes, become no easier than guiding a toddler. A blind, deaf toddler, who spared no interest in staying upright, and also had a metric fuck ton of psychotropic drugs in her system.

The walk there seemed to take much longer than it had going up, but John was sure that was his own adrenaline crash happening. He’d been stressed—about getting Faith out, about what he’d find, if he’d find anything at all or if they’d have done away with Elliot seconds after getting her.

 _Fuck_ . The thought filtered through his brain with dismay at the realization that he had been worried about her. Jacob was right; he’d really only needed to get Faith. But Elliot had been—she’d gone in there for _them_ , and Joseph wanted her alive, and—

“Tired,” Elliot said, her voice hoarse and cracking with exhaustion as she took agonizing step after agonizing step. “I’m so tired, J—”

“I know,” John and Joey said, both cutting Elliot off and overlapping each other at the same time. Of course, John already knew what it was like to handle Elliot like this. They’d toddled through one field with Elliot clutching him like an anchor, drugged to the gills, once already; this was new territory for the other deputy.

Joey gave him a dark, turbulent look—the kind that implied murderous intent—and John turned his attention back to the task at hand: getting the fuck out of there.

As soon as the truck came into sight, running with the lights off, John let himself breathe a sigh of relief. He hadn’t thought Jacob would _really_ up and leave them, but it also wasn’t impossible that he would have insisted and said _fuck off_ if Joseph had protested. His eldest brother had been notorious for pushing back, for picking fights, and maybe—just maybe—he was pissed enough to follow through this time.

“About time,” Jacob said from the driver’s seat. Joseph did not give his input, which only served to further John’s personal unease as he opened the tailgate of the truck. Joey climbed in first, swaying just a little. He’d noticed that _her_ pupils looked blown, too, though not quite as much as Elliot’s, so it must not have been fully out of her system yet.

John glanced up the hill absently. The sound of Eden’s Gate members still echoed. _Not quite done yet,_ he thought absently, and then said, “Alright, Deputy, let’s get a move on.”

“Too high,” Elliot sighed, and he wasn’t sure if she meant the tailgate or herself. John turned her around from trying to clamber into the back and gripped her hips; her hands fluttered unsteadily before holding onto his arms.

“Don’t throw up on me,” he said.

She looked tired. Each second her eyes spent open seemed to demand more and more energy from her. “Expensive shirt, huh?”

“That’s right.”

He hoisted her into the back of the truck; she sat on the tailgate for a second only, and swayed forward like she was going to tumble right off; she steadied her hands on his shoulders, fingers gripping his shirt and bleeding warm against his skin.

“You did it too fast,” Elliot muttered, her voice verging on spoiled brat. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, John climbed in after her as she scooted to the farthest spot away from the tailgate. Jacob didn’t wait for the tailgate to close before he pulled out of the brush; the truck hit the dirt road with a heavy _thunk_ that had his teeth rattling around in his skull. _Fucker,_ he thought, slamming the tailgate shut before the dust kicked up beneath them.

Elliot had her back pressed against the window into the truck. Blood covered her face and matted strands of her hair where they’d stuck to her cheeks; the vicious edge to her was dulled, whittled down to the bone until she was just a small girl folded up into the side of Joey Hudson.

When her eyes had fluttered shut and the night had settled a chill over them, Joey’s gaze flickered across John for a moment before landing on his face. She was silent, studying him—in a most infuriating way, _wordlessly_ —before she finally said, “What happened?”

John glanced out at the Montana wilderness stretching out behind her, late into the night; he thought about the way Elliot had balked at the sight of the treeline, like there was something in there only she could see, something horrible.

“Well, the boys and I thought it’d be a nice night to go out,” he replied flatly, cocking his head before looking at Joey. “It’s been a while since we’ve done anything fun, you know, so it was nice to get the gang all together again for a little _fun_.”

The brunette’s expression flattened. “The devil rebuking sin.”

“I shot the psycho and I got Elliot out of there,” John bit out. “What did you expect?”

“You, to leave her,” Joey snapped. “That’s what I would have expected out of you.”

The words shouldn’t have stung. They were coming from Joey Hudson, after all, the only person that Elliot really cared about and so clearly the only person that John could use against her. But these facts were minor details to him now, carefully pinned out somewhere in the back of his mind—always accessible, but no longer important. Hudson had stopped being very important at all when she stopped being something to dangle in front of Elliot. Now they stung for a different reason, something that John couldn’t put his thumb on.

 _That’s not very true,_ something in him said, rattling against the bones of his rib cage. _You know exactly why that bothers you._

“Well, that’s on you, isn’t it?” John replied, keeping his voice sickly sweet. “I’ll have you know I took very good care of your hellcat.”

“Yeah,” Joey ventured dryly, “having her shoved into a cult that shot her so full of poison it was coming out of her eyes really showed some TLC.”

“I’m sure she told you the plan was different,” John bit out.

“She tried. Which is why I’m wondering why you even fucking came back for us at all, Seed.”

Though Joey’s voice was soft so as not to rustle Elliot, it was _pounding_ with venom. Hatred. That was to be expected, he thought; after all, in the short time that she’d been his ward, he’d done his very hardest to lure Elliot in with her fear and then passed her off almost immediately to Faith. But still, the wording struck him—it was the same sentiment that Jacob had flung in his face after blowing Ase’s brains out.

_You put Faith at risk going back for her._

_I’m wondering why you even fucking came back for us at all._

It was never the plan to save Elliot. It was always: get Faith, get out, and if you can get the deputy too—sure. Why not? She’d be indebted to them. Even more so if they got Joey out with her. But Faith should have been the absolute priority first, and he’d left her down at the lake to go back up into the middle of a firefight to get Elliot and Joey out.

_If we’re partners, you have to trust me._

“I don’t know why it bothers you so much,” he managed out, trying to keep his voice as clipped as he could. “Normally, when people are rescued, they’re _thankful._ ”

“You _did_ kidnap me,” Joey snapped, “so you’re closer to us being equal than my being grateful, and even that’s pushing it. I just don’t know if the rescuing still counts as a good deed if you only did it for _yourself.”_

John stared at her, eyes narrowing and jaw setting, tense and tight until pain radiated up into his skull. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, _Deputy Hudson_ —”

“Then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”

Elliot stirred, eyelashes fluttering. She coughed into Joey’s shoulder—the gesture not lost on the brunette, who grimaced a little—and when her eyes landed on John there was an eerieness about them, like she was trying to pull him open and peer inside, peel back the vibrating tension and hostility that Joey Hudson’s interrogation brought of him.

“What?” John asked, barely masking his irritation. It shouldn’t have bothered him so much, but it _did_ because he couldn’t get the way she’d said, _John?_ out of his head, small and wounded so very afraid, with Ase’s blood drenching her.

“Just trying to figure out which John you are,” Elliot replied, her voice slick with exhaustion and the words rolling out of her mouth in something close to a slur. They sent an uneasy jolt through him. It was the drugs, surely—she probably said all kinds of weird shit while she was high. He didn’t know what she was seeing, anyway.

_(—fucking hate you, John Seed, John Duncan, whatever the fuck your name is, whoever the fuck you are—)_

The blonde sighed again. The breath sounded like some kind of exertion for her; she squirmed and tried to get more comfortable against Joey’s shoulder, the blood on her face staining the forest-green of the deputy’s shirt. John’s head ached. The memory of Joseph, silent while Jacob debated the logistics of getting a killing shot through Elliot, flickered through his mind, venomous.

_(—should see yourself whenever Joseph says anything. You practically fall over to kiss the ground he fucking walks on—)_

“Well,” he replied, settling more comfortably in his spot across from the two women, “let me know when you find out, why don’t you, Rook?” He let his head loll back against the lip of the truck bed, a dark, cloudless night spreading out above him. He wanted to brush aside the way Elliot looked at him, but he had learned long ago that was the quickest way to underestimate her.

“I’m just _dying_ to know.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

The truck came to a halting stop. John hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until the strange inertia-pull of the truck stilling rustled him from his sleep. It was hard to say how long they had been on the road, but if he had to guess—and, taking into consideration how Jacob liked to drive—he’d wager it had been only thirty minutes.

Across from him, Elliot was awake, murmuring something to Joey that he couldn’t hear over the sound of the engine giving one last kick before Jacob turned it off. There was a higher clarity about the blonde, now, one that implied that sleep had done her well—though the pupils of her eyes stayed wide, there was now a sliver of baby blue that he could see, if he looked close enough.

He grimaced as exhaustion burned through his body, and for a brief second, their eyes met; like before, they _pried_ at him, tried to see something that maybe he didn’t want her to. 

As he lowered the tailgate of the truck and slid out, John turned around and instinctively reached to steady Elliot as she tried to climb down.

“I’m fine,” she said, more biting than he anticipated. _Just coming down,_ John thought absently, his hands only remaining in the air for a second after her assertion before dropping to his sides again.

“Oh, yeah,” John replied, “I forgot that you’d rather I let you eat shit than keep you from falling over.”

 _She’s always been willful,_ he mused _._ The thought occurred as though John had known Elliot for a long time. In a way, he supposed that he did; fuck, he’d tried every goddamn trick in the book to lure her in, and she’d still spit her venom into her walkie at every chance she’d gotten. There was nothing that John didn’t try and dig up, nothing that he hadn’t racked his brain for in the brief moment that they’d visited all those years ago. And still— _and still, and still_ —she—

“Hudson,” John said, offering his hand to her because he was a gentleman and certainly not because he enjoyed the way the gesture made her squirm.

“Fuck off, John,” Joey replied tersely, sliding off the truck bed as well. John smiled dryly.

He said, the needling coming to him like second nature, “So nice to have both of you here at one time. It’s what I always wanted, you know.”

Elliot shot him a look, one that sucked the wind right out of his sails. It was a _wounded_ look, like he had suddenly reminded her of the things he had done, and John felt an uncomfortable twist in his stomach. He didn’t know why the words came out—a force of habit, maybe, or the way that Joey Hudson’s animosity (and _closeness_ ) to Elliot made his hackles raise. As though Joey’s presence made a choice immediately clear for her, and she _chose_ Joey.

The clench of his jaw sent pain radiating up into his skull. He thought that things had been much simpler pre-Joey Hudson, and he was regretting having helped her.

“I knew you’d come and save me,” Faith said, her voice breaking him out of the turmoil of his thoughts. She smiled at him, and it would have almost been endearing if her pupils weren’t absolutely blown to hell, reminding him that they’d probably done more than just drug her with some weird hallucinogen—the way she’d been acting when he’d seen her on the road had been something more akin to the kinds of things Faith had partaken of before.

He reached up, pulling her into a one-armed hug. “Yeah?” he replied. “You listened to those crazies?”

“They’re not _crazy_ ,” Faith sighed. Her voice bloomed with something like affection, and when she looked at him, there was a startling clarity about her expression—keen, and a little sly. _Not so innocent, our Faith,_ he thought absently. “Just different, John. And you came, didn’t you?”

A prickling sensation crawled up the back of his neck. John glanced away from Faith, his gaze meeting Joseph’s from where he stood in front of the car; per usual, his expression was unreadable, obscured behind a mask of tranquility that provided no insight on what his brother was thinking or feeling.

“Go on,” John said, patting Faith’s back, “get some sleep. You’re going to feel like hell in a few hours, you know.”

She laughed, like maybe she didn’t quite hear what he actually said, and slid out of his half-embrace to wander around to the front of the car where Joseph was waiting. He turned his gaze away, swallowing back the feeling that he’d somehow failed a test—something that only Joseph knew the meters and results of, that he’d have to sweat until he found out about.

Elliot had already started walking away with Joey, taking her back to the same bunkhouse that she’d been holding up in prior to their little excursion. They spoke in low voices to one another; Elliot’s expression was even _soft,_ softer than it had been when he’d found her sobbing into the grass in the field, when she’d been terrified out of her skin. Softer than when she’d had Ase’s brains splattered all over her.

John sucked his teeth, pushing the tailgate of the truck up until it latched. The adrenaline crash was starting to hit him hard, now. Every muscle in his body ached with the effort of moving, as though they’d all tensed and held for hours at a time; maybe they had. Gunfire and screaming still echoed in his head, while corpse after corpse, and Ase’s shattered head, lingered just behind his eyelids. They didn’t bother him, these images of glory and gore—but he couldn’t shake the way that Elliot had looked at him from the ground, drenched in blood, terrified.

_Terrified of him._

“It’s always going to be like that, you know.” It was Jacob’s hard, steely voice that pulled him now, like his siblings wanted to take turns interrupting his train of thought. “She’s always going to pick Hudson over us.” His brother leveled him with one swift, hard look. “Over _you_.”

“Funny,” John muttered, “I didn’t realize you were a psych professional, Jacob.”

“Faith could have died because you went back for that girl,” Jacob bit out, his voice low but vibrating with something more venomous. “I know _you_ know that, you aren’t stupid. And you went back for her anyway. So—”

“So, what?” he interrupted, trying not to let the frustrated venom from watching Elliot take Joey’s hand and walk off bubble out of him. “Faith’s alive, that crazy bitch is dead. What else do you want?”

“For you to get your shit together,” Jacob snapped. “Like I said, I know you’re not stupid, but do yourself the favor and prove it to me anyway. That _girl_ —”

 _That girl,_ Jacob said, like the words didn’t suddenly fill John with some kind of poison. The eldest Seed gestured toward the bunkhouse, where inevitably, Elliot and Joey were conspiring; to leave, to kill. At this point, John wasn’t sure, and he didn’t think that either would surprise him.

“—is _nothing._ Don’t let _nothing_ fuck everything up for us.” Jacob’s words were hard and cold. He gripped John’s shoulder and added, “Don’t let nothing fuck everything up for Joseph.”

That’s what it really boiled down to at the end of it all: that Joseph had _seen_ like he always did, because nothing went without Joseph’s seeing, and maybe he wasn’t sure that Elliot was really worth the trouble anymore. Before, Joseph had wanted her to add to their little collection of misfits, just like he’d added the sheriff’s receptionist, just like he’d picked up Faith when she was Rachel, just like when he let Jacob tap into the worst parts of him for use, _just like just like just like_. Joseph was hard-pressed to find a vicious misfit that he didn’t want for himself, and Elliot Honeysett had been no different.

But a hard-to-break will cost time, and resources, and maybe with these _locusts in their garden_ , that just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Not for Joseph. Not right now. Where was this, anyway, back at the start of it all? Back when John had wanted to do things _his way?_

“Whatever Joseph’s opinion on the usefulness of the deputy, Burke’s gone,” John said after a minute. Jacob’s hand still sat heavy on his shoulder; he passed a hand over his face and sighed. “That marshal, the one that was—”

“I remember.”

John grimaced. “He was with Faith, and Hudson, but he wasn’t at the camp that I could see.” He paused again. “Jacob, if he got out and he made it out of Hope County, he’ll be a problem.”

The red-headed nodded once, brisk. “A big fucking problem.” Another pause, and then: “Tell me you’ll get this whole issue with the deputy wrapped up.”

John’s jaw clenched. _Tell me you can do this,_ Joseph had said. _Tell me you’ll get this whole issue wrapped up._ Hadn’t he proven he was capable of handling her? Hadn’t Joseph himself said that?

“There’s no issue,” he replied flatly, stepping around Jacob and heading to the church. “Never was.”

“Good.”

It was easy to say, and harder to believe. He knew—the rational part of his brain, somewhere inside of him—knew that he was _jealous_ of Hudson. That he knew exactly what Hudson thought of him, and he hated that someone who hated him had Elliot immediately trailing after her like a puppy, as though the last three days—all of those _moments_ hadn’t meant—

And what was he supposed to think, then, about the way that her lashes had fluttered when his fingers brushed her skin, the way the heat crawled under her freckles when he slid into her planetary pull? That it was just—passing? Nothing?

_Does it matter?_

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡ 

Elliot was having a hard time.

That was to say, there were a lot of conflicting emotions that were welling up inside of her, crashing down like tidal waves. Normally, she’d be able to bottle those pesky things up and bury them deep inside her, to access later (which could be minutes, or days, or years—whenever); but with the drugs still wreaking havoc on her, she felt like all of her normal defenses were crashed and battered, maybe even beyond repair. Maybe even _permanently decimated._

It was lucky that she had Joey, she supposed as she closed the bunkhouse door behind them, letting the noise of it soothe her over-worked senses; lucky, because Joey had always been her lighthouse in the times that she needed it the most.

“We have to get out of here,” Joey said, and the words immediately exhausted Elliot further. She took in a long, suffering breath and sat down on the edge of one of the bunk beds, rubbing her hands against her face. She was far from out of the woods; she thought maybe she was starting to come down, or even crash, because it felt like electrical pulses kept ricocheting through her body and they wouldn’t stop.

Elliot managed out, “I’m in no shape to go anywhere, Joey, you know that I—”

She saw the look on Joey’s face. _Distress._ John had kidnapped her, and terrorized her with whatever it was he had originally planned to do to her, and now they were here, in the compound, where it had all began. And yes; John had kidnapped Joey, _and_ her, and yes, he was a fucking psycho, and—

And yes, he knew her well enough to shove a cigarette in her hands when she was stressed, and he didn’t complain when her nails dug into him when she thought the world was going to split in two around her, and yes, he did come back for her when he didn’t have to, and yes _and yes_ —

 _‘And yes’ what?_ A nasty voice inside of her head said. _A man so much as looks at you and all of a sudden you’re on the other side?_

“I can try,” she offered weakly. “I can try, if you want to go now, but I don’t know where Boomer is and everyone from Hope County is—hopefully—already gone. I don’t have anything.”

When the words came out of her mouth, she felt the last thread holding herself together snap. _I don’t have anything,_ the words echoing hollow inside of her, reminding her that everyone was gone, maybe they were dead, that she didn’t know where her dog or her mama were and maybe that meant that she didn’t have anything left _inside_ of her, either, nothing left to give. That she had scraped and scraped to the bottom of the barrel and now she’d have to start breaking herself into pieces to have anything worthwhile to give anyone.

“I don’t have anything, Joey,” she said again, her voice wobbling and wet and _fuck,_ she hated it so much, the burning of her eyes stinging against blood and viscera collecting in the tears. “I don’t, I’m sorry—I’m really sorry—”

Joey crossed the small space of the bunkhouse to crouch in front of her. She pressed her hands into Elliot’s shoulders, and she _was_ saying something, but Elliot couldn’t hear it over the pounding of blood in her head.

She pressed the heels of her palms against her eye sockets, but the gesture brought no comfort; each time she closed her eyes, she kept seeing Ase, skull caved in. Surely, one shot had been enough? Surely, the second shot to her head was just—

_Just John being himself._

“God, he fucking—he mutilated her, Joey,” Elliot managed out, her voice breaking on something like agony as the panic started to set in. Her hands trembled and she pushed the hair from her face, a movement that she was sure was just packing the dried blood in. She couldn’t get her eyes to focus on anything; everywhere she looked, she thought she could see the dark flicker of Ase’s clothing, the haunting corpse come to finish what she started. “She was dead—all of her, just falling— _spilling_ out of her, like she’d been gutted, and I thought that he was done, and we’d go home, but then he shot her _again_ —God, _fuck_ , Joey, she’s all _over_ _me_ —”

“Hey,” Joey said firmly. “El. Take a breath and look at me.”

“I _am.”_

“A bigger breath,” Joey insisted, taking her hands away from her face and pulling her to a stand. “Just one.”

She did. _I see_ , she thought and failed. _I smell, I hear, I feel,_ but nothing came. She was drowning in it, whatever it was; Ase’s blood and guts on her, the memory of her glassy eyes as Ase reached for her, the feeling of Kian’s hands on her neck, the horrific monster lurking in the woods, and…

“Take another,” Joey reiterated. “Just one more.”

Elliot knew this trick. It was the oldest trick in Joey’s book. Just ask for one, and then just one more, and then just _one_ more, until she was breathing like normal. She did as the brunette bid her anyway, and because her normal grounding methods had failed her, she instead thought, _I’ll just count to ten. If I can make it for ten more seconds… And then another ten…_

“You’re still sweating hallucinogen,” Joey murmured, squeezing her hands to help bring her back down. “You should take a shower. Come on.”

The journey between the main room of the bunkhouse and the felt both like it took years and happened without her knowing, as though she’d blinked and suddenly found herself standing in the bathroom, the fluorescent on the ceiling digging into her irises.

Her gaze flickered up to the mirror hanging over the sink. The person that looked back was a stranger to her; blood splattered every inch of her skin, matted in her hair, staining her in dark, carmine gore. Elliot thought about the strange voice in the woods, crackling and snapping and trying her on for size as it slid under her skin.

As the glass of the mirror seemed to pulse and stretch, the sound of running water snapped her attention elsewhere, hands limp at her sides. Joey pulled the knob that turned the water into a shower and said, “Okay, Elli, you call if you need me.”

“Okay,” Elliot murmured tiredly.

“Okay,” Joey repeated, watching her for a moment. And then she pulled her into a tight hug, and whispered, “For the record, I never doubted you’d be able to get me out. From John, or from the other place.”

The words didn’t offer her any comfort, but they were nice, nonetheless. She nodded her head and waited until the brunette had left the room before she started to undress, her movements methodical but unsteady; it wasn’t until water hit her skin and she saw the streams of thinned blood touching down on the floor of the bathtub that she finally felt _some_ relief.

Even if it was only a little.

 _I don’t have anything,_ she thought tiredly, her eyes closing as she ducked her face under the stream of the shower. _I don’t have anything left. What am I supposed to do now?_

She had Joey. She didn’t have any idea of how to find Boomer. Hope County was gone, if they were lucky, and dead if they weren’t. She hadn’t heard from her own mother in--weeks? Or was it days? How long had this been going on?

It felt strange, to not be able to trust her own memory—to not know when the last time was that she got a full night’s sleep, or the last time that she curled up in her own bed, or the last time that she spent doing something that she enjoyed. As Elliot scrubbed the blood off of her face and out of her hair, staining her fingernails rusted-red, she thought that the idea of _continuing on_ , of _doing more,_ was so very exhausting.

 _They didn’t hurt you?_ John had asked, his fingers brushing the bruises on her throat where Kian’s fingers had gripped. It bothered her, when people touched her—grabbed her like they owned her, like she wasn’t in control of her own body—but when John did it, it was different. Even when he’d dragged his finger under her collarbone and said, _I think it’ll fit nicely right here, don’t you? Just over your heart._

John was only doing what he was meant to do all along: draw her in, keep her there, and Ase’s gruesome death was just a reminder of the person that he really was. She had forgotten that.

But she wouldn’t again.

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

The night felt sticky, sitting like a second skin on him. When John stepped into the church to find Jacob and Joseph talking in low voices, he felt a strange sensation prickle down his spine. It was _anticipation,_ he realized, nearly a moment too late; by the time he was bracing himself, Jacob had turned and walked out the side door, leaving himself and Joseph alone.

“How is our deputy?” Joseph asked, his voice light and mild. John tried to lessen the tension in his jaw.

“Which one?” he replied dryly. “She’s fine.”

Joseph said, “You were worried about her.”

“Well, I did work really fucking hard not to kill her,” he bit out, and then sighed at the way Joseph’s brow arched, a visible change in his expression even in the dim, intimate lighting of the chapel. “Look, Jacob already gave me the whole speech about—”

“I think you’re doing a great job with the deputy,” Joseph interrupted, firm but not unkind, “and I want you to continue.”

John stopped. Maybe it was the adrenaline crash, or the way that he’d come into the conversation at what appeared to be the end of it, but he couldn’t wrap his head around what Joseph was telling him; especially after what Jacob had said to him.

So he said, very intelligently, “What?”

“Our friend the marshal got out,” Joseph supplied. “Hope County has evacuated, if they’re lucky. But you know, John, even if they come for us—even if they arrest us—there are…”

A pause lingered between them, just long enough for something close to dread to knot and writhe between his ribs.

“... ways,” his brother continued, placing each word meticulously, “to make a legal case like this one fall apart.”

 _I don’t know what you mean,_ John wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out of him. If Hope County was on the run, they might not ever look back; if the U.S. Marshal brought his buddies back, that would make Elliot the key witness in their case, while the other members of Hope County and the Resistance were…

“It’ll be all of them testifying against us,” John said after a moment. “I appreciate your confidence in my abilities, but—”

“You can convince people not to talk,” Joseph replied. He paced away from the table at the center of the chapel’s front room, absently scratching at his jaw, as though he were only just coming up with this idea; John knew that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t ever the case with Joseph. Nothing went without careful deliberation. “There are particular brands of persuasion that work better than others. But we’ll need more than just silencing our neighbors. We’ll need…”

 _Positive testimony,_ John thought, when the words didn’t come out of Joseph’s mouth.

“Yeah,” John murmured tiredly. “I know.”

“Good.” Joseph gave him a small smile. He reached out, gripping John’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, John.”

He stared at the wood paneling of the floor. Maybe he was tired; maybe it was the exhaustion from the last few hours, but Joseph’s words didn’t strike the same match in him that they had before. If Joseph noticed—and he almost certainly had—he didn’t let it show; rather, he let the distance between them grow, hand dropping from his shoulder as he walked for the door.

“You were going to let Jacob kill her.” The words came out of John’s mouth before he could think to stop them, before he could say to himself, _it’s not worth the fight. He’s your brother, John. He gave you everything. Don’t you always say that you waited your whole life for something to say yes to?_

He felt, more than he saw, Joseph pause in the doorway leading out of the chapel. A strange silence stretched between them; it was one where John thought he might have felt the scrutiny of his older brother’s gaze on him.

And then, in a voice casual and light, Joseph said, “You’re tired, John. You’ve had a long day. Get some rest, won’t you?”

John _was_ tired. Tired enough to think that he might fall asleep standing up if he wasn’t careful. “You’re right,” he said after a moment, turning his head to look at Joseph over his shoulder with a small smile. “I will.”

“Goodnight, John.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Night passed more quickly than he would have liked. By the time morning had arrived, he thought maybe his conversation with Joseph was a dream; that he’d hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe some of the Family’s weird drugs had rubbed off on him while he was in there.

By the time early morning had rolled around, he’d dragged himself through a shower and into cleaner clothes. He half expected to find the bunkhouse completely vacated by Elliot and Hudson by the time he walked out with an armful of clothes, pleasantly surprised that Elliot was leaned against the door. Smoking, naturally.

“You look more like yourself,” John said as he approached. Her gaze flickered over him absently. She looked tired, but had since washed the blood and guts off of her face and out of her hair; as she took a drag of her cigarette and tapped the ash out of the end of it, her eyes turned away from him. _Weird,_ he thought. He added, “I know you’ve got the whole blood-stained look, but I thought you might like to get into some clothes that are a bit cleaner.”

Elliot smoothed her boot over some ash on the ground, waiting for a heartbeat longer than normal before she said, “Thanks.” She sounded _sour_ , like John’s mere existence was a chore for her, and not the way that it had been before—like she _really meant it._

“You’re welcome,” he replied, watching her curiously. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, and the sickly rasp in her voice—it had probably felt nice to be high in _that_ regard—she looked clear-headed. Normal. “How are you feeling?”

“John,” Elliot sighed, “let’s not.”

“Fine,” John snipped. “Where’s Hudson?”

“She went to walk the perimeter to try and call Boomer,” Elliot replied tiredly. “And then we’re leaving.”

 _Fuck,_ he thought, remembering his conversation with Joseph. _Fuck fuck fuck._ “Well, isn’t that _lovely.”_ The biting venom welled up in his voice. There was a strange panic setting in now. She wouldn’t look at him, not for longer than a second, and her tone rang hollow and empty. He swallowed thickly, teeth clenching as he continued, “And how do you intend to leave, then? On foot? You sure seem like you’re in peak physical condition to be walking cross-country, Elliot. But I suppose if you have Hudson, then it won’t matter, because Hudson rescued you from those cultists and—”

“I don’t know, _John_ ,” Elliot bit out, a real flex in her voice this time. It was comforting, to have her be anything—anything but ambivalent, anything but absent from their conversation. “I think I could get pretty far if I decide to start blowing people’s fucking skulls in with a shotgun, don’t _you?”_

John stared at her. “Pardon?”

“Oh, fuck off,” the blonde snipped, dropping what remained of the cigarette and stomping it out with her shoe. “Don’t give me your fucking clothes. If I change out of these I might forget that you splattered me with that woman’s brains.”

She turned and opened the door to the bunkhouse, going to close it, but John shoved his foot in the doorway to stop her, tossing the clothes onto the bed the second he got inside. 

“I _didn’t_ ,” John seethed. “Maybe you were too fucking high out of your mind to tell—”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Elliot’s voice was flinty. “It completely slipped my mind that you’re incapable of taking responsibility for yourself. Remember, John, that time you rubbed it in my face that your fucking family made me into a _murderer?_ Because I do, and the pure _fucking irony_ —” She jabbed a finger into his chest, the anger seeping out of her now. “—of you trying to make _me_ feel like shit for killing your idiotic little cultists and then obliterating a woman’s skull onto my face is _palpable!”_

“Are you deaf?” John snapped, snagging her wrist before she could turn and try to walk somewhere else again. “I didn’t shoot Ase in the head, Jacob did. I put both my fucking hands on you to get you off the ground. How am I going to do that holding a fucking shotgun, Elliot?”

“I don’t know!” she replied furiously. There was a reckless, high-color in her cheeks, her voice cracking and breaking on something that John couldn’t quite pin down, couldn’t quite get his hands on. Even now, he thought, even when she was spitting her venom she was _so_ — 

“I don’t fucking know, John, you do—crazy fucking things all the time,” she insisted, and there was an uncomfortable wobble in her voice as her lashes fluttered. “Half the time I don’t know which John is going to open his fucking mouth—I don’t know if it’s—if it’s the John that kidnapped my best friend or if it’s the John that… That can be… With me, he’s...”

Her voice trailed off, weaker now, her fire spitting furiously as it tried to stay alight. John’s fingers loosened around her wrist, but didn’t let her go.

“There’s only one John,” he said, and his voice came out hoarse. “It’s just me.”

“I hate you,” the blonde managed out weakly, her lashes dark with unshed tears, soft and doe-like. “I’ve never—”

“Elliot,” John, tugging on her wrist, pulling her forward until she was in his space, until he could feel the warmth of her body and smell the wild on her—pine trees and ash and the mild shampoo she had used, “you’re going to have to come up with a new slogan that you actually believe.”

“John,” she tried again, and she was _soft,_ soft and tired, “please, I’m—so tired of trying to figure you out—”

He closed what little space remained between them to kiss her; for a second, her entire body tensed like an animal ready for flight, stony and immovable against the affection, but he let her wrist slide from his hand, concerned that any moment he might spook her, that she was frozen because she was deciding when to run.

Her wrist slipped through his grip, catching at the base of her hand. She knotted her fingers into the front of his shirt and when his hand came up to the slope of her jaw, she _leaned_ —like a flower to sunlight, blooming under his touch, just like that. Just that easy. John’s other arm slid around her waist to tug her up closer, and her mouth parted against his like instinct, like it had never _not_ been this way between them.

The moment stretched; reality swung back in, the warmth of her mouth against his leaning back until a bit of space stretched between them. Not a lot, just enough for their noses to brush, and Elliot said, “I don’t know which—”

“I told you,” he replied, threading his fingers through her hair, “there’s just the one. This one, El, me. I want—”

“John,” she started, her voice overlapping his, "tell me that you're not lying when—"

He went to say, _I want you to stay, I want to kiss you again, you hellcat, I’ve wanted to kiss you for days,_ but he didn’t get the chance because the sound of Joey’s voice outside the front door had broken the magic of the moment.

“Elliot,” Hudson called, “guess who I...”

The door opened, followed quickly by a scattering of dog nails as Boomer came racing inside. Without a second thought, Elliot had crouched down to wrap her arms around the dog, and John immediately took a step back and cleared his throat, feeling as though he’d been caught-out. Maybe, in a way, he had. He wouldn’t have cared, if he didn’t think that the idea of Hudson catching them would have made Elliot bolt instantly.

 _I should have kissed her again,_ he thought absently, watching Elliot fawn over Boomer with the kind of delight that she reserved only for him, her lips kiss-reddened. _Before Hudson._

“He must have followed you here and waited,” Hudson said, looking at John with a narrowed, suspicious gaze. “Everything okay, Elliot?” she asked, even when she was looking at John. “I heard arguing.”

“Fine,” Elliot insisted, crouched on the floor to get as close to the Heeler as possible. “Everything’s fine. John was just—”

“Just dropping off some clean clothes for the deputy,” John interjected, despite the anxiety he felt sliding around inside of him when Elliot looked at him. The flush in her cheeks remained, and he knew that it wasn’t just anger there, anymore. Not really. 

Joey crossed her arms over her chest. “Great. So you can leave, then? We’re done with you.”

 _We’re_ , she said, like she spoke for the both of him, both herself and Elliot. _We’re,_ like just seconds ago, John hadn’t been thinking about the way Elliot’s breath hitched when his fingers brushed her skin.

“Sure thing,” he drawled, taking a few steps toward the door. He almost walked right out the door, even with his hands itching for her again, but he stopped. _I should just say it,_ he thought. _I should just out it right now._

“What is it?” Joey prompted, her voice hard and flinty.

Elliot wouldn’t ever forgive him if he did.

“Nothing,” John replied after a moment. A little smile ticked the corners of his mouth upward, and for a second his gaze met Elliot’s. “Hope you get some well-deserved rest, you two.”

The brunette watched him with a dark, inscrutable gaze, and he stepped out of the bunkhouse, letting the door swing shut behind him. For just a moment, he paused outside the door; long enough to hear Joey go, “What was _that_ about?”, and he started off across the yard.

_Not done with me yet, deputy._


	12. splinters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "what do you MEAN you're closer to your best friend and actual working partner than me, the guy who tried to drown you like a week ago" - @starcrier, impersonating john seed
> 
> Or: things go really good AND really bad and so like, what does that leave us? Idk man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't want to sound like a broken record but I mean it when I say: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! This chapter is 11k words long and I don't have anything to say for myself, I just want y'all to know it wouldn't have happened without y'all (which you know by now).
> 
> I've been staring at this chapter for like 3 days so I'm gonna keep this short but. I hope you enjoy! Everyone say thank you to @starcrier for proofreading this hot mess and then we can move on to wishing John and Elliot would just bang it out already.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include: uhhhhhhh descrips of an anxiety attack, Elliot turns feral like 2x, Joseph is V creepy (what's new--so I guess like, some Joseph/Deputy if you squint again), brief allusions to assault, also some very very very VERY minor steaminess mentioned but it's like just John being himself inside his own brain so. Yeah.

“So what the hell was that?”

Elliot didn’t particularly want to think about it, and she _especially_ didn’t want to discuss the nature of her last John Seed Interaction with Joey. She knew how that was going to go—and even if she didn’t, she’d hardly figured out the whole thing herself. She didn’t think her heart had stopped hammering even after he’d left.

_I told you, there’s just the one. This one, El, me._

Boomer’s cold nose pressing against her chin pulled her mind away from the feeling of John’s fingers in her hair, his arm slid around her waist, his mouth on hers, the faded scent of his cologne washing over her. Already she felt the heat crawling back into her face and she swallowed thickly, closing her eyes as she planted a kiss on the side of Boomer’s face.

“It wasn’t anything,” Elliot said, before she could think too much on how the lie coming out of her mouth made her feel. She’d never lied to Joey—not about anything, not about her ex-boyfriend or her mama or _anything_ —but it felt like a losing game to be honest about what had happened, especially before she’d even figured out how she felt about it.

“Didn’t look like nothing,” Joey replied, sitting on the edge of one of the beds. “And you’re doing that thing you do when you’re trying to lie.”

“It was _nothing,_ ” Elliot insisted. There was no heat in the words. She pulled Boomer into her lap and rubbed his belly, watching the Heeler loll his head dreamily against the affection. The blush was starting to fade from her face now, and in its place was the stabilizing familiarity of the hound.

Joey watched her for a moment before she said, “Crazy that Boomer didn’t rip John’s throat out.”

Deciding against answering—because the answer would almost certainly sound like she was defending _John_ , which she did not want to follow up whatever it was that had just happened—Elliot instead pressed her cheek to Boomer’s and shrugged.

 _John kissed me,_ something in her mind said, furiously rebellious, _and I kissed him back. Fuck fuck fuck._

“El,” Joey said quiet, “we have to get out of here.”

“Yeah,” Elliot agreed. “We will. We can hitch it Fall’s End, you think? And get... Supplies, and a car, and...”

Her voice trailed off. The idea of walking all the way to Fall’s End from the compound, unarmed—because the Seeds would certainly not give them arms if they could help it—exhausted her. While the drugs that the Family had pumped into her were mostly out of her system by now, save the occasional faint wobble in the corner of her vision, her body still ached; her lungs still strained to fight off the sickness she’d gotten just days ago, which had been blissfully tamped down from her senses while she was high but was now back in full force.

“But it’s dangerous,” she added after a moment. “With the—the others still out there. I thought if Ase died it would be the end of them, but—”

“The big one.” Joey’s voice was a quiet agreement. “He’s going to be mad. I thought I heard him last night, when we were getting out of there, after John and Jacob brought you back down.”

Another quiet pause stretched between them. Elliot couldn’t help but think back to what John had said: that he hadn’t shot Ase that second time, but Jacob had. She couldn’t remember for the life of her if John had been holding the shotgun or not when they got down the slope. She couldn’t remember if she saw Jacob _with_ a shotgun. She couldn’t remember much from that night, anyway, besides the dread that had flooded her body when Ase had made her look into the woods, and the strike of the woman’s viscera against her face when she’d been finished off.

Sleep had not come easily to Elliot, in the last twelve hours, and she didn’t imagine that it would any time soon. Her life had become one exhausting blur of blood and panic, with only the occasional respite of quiet, and Elliot felt deep in the marrow of her bones that pattern wasn’t going to be changing any time soon.

“Let’s just take advantage of the quiet while we can,” she suggested after a moment, rubbing her eyes tiredly. Already she wanted another cigarette, the gentle rattle of her lungs on every intake of breath told her to rethink that urge. Joey made a low noise of agreement.

The brunette slid off of her seat on the bed, scooting over until they were next to each other and she could give Boomer’s belly a steady pat. Elliot rested her cheek against Joey’s shoulder. She sighed.

“You think those Seeds are plotting something?”

“I think they never stopped,” Joey replied tiredly. “Not for one second.”

Elliot made a soft noise of agreement. She wanted to ask her what she remembered of the night before—if John was being honest when he said Jacob had delivered that second blow, if she thought that it even _mattered_ who had done it.

 _It does matter,_ she thought tiredly. _It matters to me._

“We’ll lay low for a few days,” she murmured. “Get back on our feet, and let them think.... Whatever they want to think. And just keep our wits about us until we can get to Fall’s End. Maybe one of us should stay, in case someone tries to call for us.” She closed her eyes, and for a moment, Elliot could almost pretend things were normal; it wouldn’t be crazy to think that maybe this was all just a bad, horrible dream.

But she couldn’t have dreamed up the way John had kissed her—one hand in her hair, the other gripping her hip, like he was hungry. Hungry for _her_. She had always wanted that, she thought; for someone to be starved for her. How did he know? How did he always know what she was weak to?

“And then we’ll get out of here,” Joey said, her voice soft and tired, too. Elliot couldn’t imagine how tired _she_ was, after it all.

“Yeah,” Elliot replied. She steeled her voice, but her eyes stayed closed. “Then we get the fuck out of here.”

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The best sleep she’d gotten in days was on a bed in the Eden’s Gate compound, Boomer tucked into her side. It was only an hour or two—certainly not the full night that she needed—but when she woke up she was already feeling better.

Better, and more aware of what had transpired.

She’d yelled at John about shooting Ase, and John had said that was Jacob, and there was no way to affirmatively know that he was telling the truth short of taking his word on it, and if there was one person who she didn’t trust the word of, it was John Seed.

 _Well, maybe Joseph less than him,_ she reasoned absently, rinsing her mouth with water that wasn’t contaminated with drugs in the bathroom, splashing it onto her face. _Then John, then Faith, then Jacob._

She tried not to think about how troubling it was to consider Jacob the more straight-forward of the Seed siblings, even more so than Faith, but while Elliot felt desperately like she wanted to protect the girl—she knew that was the point. Joseph wouldn’t have picked Faith if she was truly as pure as she liked to put on.

Boomer buffed in the main room of the cabin, nails clicking on the wood flooring. Elliot dried her face and headed out the front door to see what he was fussing about; Joey still slept quietly, probably glad to sleep without drugs weighing her system down and an immediate threat—well, immediately beyond the Seeds—hanging over her.

“Stay,” she murmured. “Stay with Joey, Boomer.”

The Heeler whined, low and exceptionally pathetic, before crouching low to the floor and settling. She closed the cabin door behind her and wiped her hands absently on the front of her jeans, gaze flickering across the yard. Joseph had apparently gathered the members of Eden’s Gate from hiding and they now milled about, heads turning wherever she went, hostile but controlled. For now. It wasn’t unlike the first time that Elliot had walked into the compound with Burke and Whitehorse, as she moved across the yard to the chapel; almost surreal, the world fizzing around her in a white-static as she remembered the way it felt to have Joseph look at her and say, _and Hell followed with him._

Dreadful.

Fall was now in full swing, which meant that though the sky was clear, the afternoon had a bite to it that was trying to work its way under her clothes and into the marrow of her bones. From the side of the church, she could see the treeline of the woods that surrounded the compound; against her better judgment, Elliot stopped at the chainlink fence and stared.

The monster in the woods that she’d seen last night still stuck to her—wadded up somewhere right in the hollow of her jaw, locking her mouth shut from being able to talk about it. It wasn’t like she’d know what to say if she _could_ talk about it, anyway; _I saw something big, and scary, and it was in the woods and it knows me._ What would it matter? It had just been the drugs, anyway. A madness shared by a group of people, seeing what they wanted to see, melding with the things that Elliot hated the most.

Seeing herself, hearing herself, and not recognizing who she was anymore.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

She didn’t have to turn around to know who it was; the slick, rich timbre of Joseph’s voice rattled through her, straight down to the marrow of her bones. _If I could have only gotten a good look at it,_ something in her said, like the monster had been real, like something really was out there trying to slide under her skin.

“Joey and I are leaving,” Elliot said, by way of response; she could feel Joseph’s eyes on her, his footsteps against the packed dirt hitting soft behind her before she saw him stop just in her peripheral. “As soon as I can get to Fall’s End, we’re leaving.”

Joseph was quiet for a moment. And then he said, “You seem troubled, deputy.”

“Well, I did get fucking drugged out of my mind,” she snapped.

“You’ve seemed troubled for a while,” he replied. “Prior to the Family, to all of this.” He gestured vaguely at the compound, absently adjusting the yellow-tinted glasses on his face. Not once did he look at her, pin her with those eyes, but rather kept his gaze focused on the forest where she’d been looking. “I saw you before, Elliot. Before you were even a junior deputy. You were different, then.”

It shouldn’t have felt like a violation to know that Joseph had seen her, known of her, before all of this—but it did. It felt like a violation because she had no way of controlling it. Joseph may as well have flipped through an old yearbook and read all of the things friends had written to her, or pried open her diary.

Elliot said, carefully and meticulously planting each word, “People change.” She was determined not to lose her temper with Joseph, not the same way that she did with John or Jacob—it made it difficult to feel justified, when the man was so hard to rattle as it was.

“People _are_ changed,” Joseph corrected her in his easy cadence, “by the things around them.”

The pressure of her molars grinding together was beginning to make a headache bloom just behind her eyes. _What the fuck does he know,_ she thought furiously, the idea that the person that she was today had been entirely out of her hands making her stomach wrench with something vicious. Joseph was full of shit, and he wore stupid sunglasses and preached hollow, empty words, so what did it matter?

It mattered a lot. It meant that she’d had no hand in who she was now, and that she wouldn’t be able to change it if she wanted to; as though, in the instance that she didn’t want to feel hungry and hurt and needing all the time, she wouldn’t be able to make it change herself. She’d have to _wait._

“If I put you in a perfect, empty bubble of a room,” he continued, when she didn’t argue, “and left you there, would anything about you change?”

“You’re the last person I would take psychological observations as truth from,” she managed out after a moment, finally turning to look at him—and he did too, at the same time, like he was ready for it. Anticipating it. Knew that she would do it all along.

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. He just watched her, his eyes glued to her own, and finally he said, “Elliot, it’s not uncommon in people who are abused to—”

The word _abused_ rinsed her system like an ice bath. It catapulted her mind somewhere else, somewhere far, away, but the muscle memory pulled through anyway, spitting the words, “I’m not _abused_ ,” out of her mouth to overrun whatever psycho-babble bullshit Joseph was trying to tell her. She might have tried to swallow down the volume of her voice had it been anything else, any _one_ else, but she felt it shoot up with hysterical rage.

“Deputy—”

“I’m _not.”_ And now she didn’t know if she was saying it for his sake or something else. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“I know that you have scars,” Joseph replied, his voice firmer now than before. And _that_ dragged her head back, neurons firing off left and right. _Red alert,_ they screamed, _abort mission._ “Scars that you don’t get from nothing. Scars that—”

“—need to stop fucking talking—”

“—only mean that you don’t become like this without—”

“Like _what?”_

He stopped. Something passed over his face, but only for a moment—not long enough for her to decipher what it was. Against her better judgement, she stayed where she was instead of walking away from him; perhaps it was a morbid curiosity, to know what it was that the great and mighty Joseph Seed thought she was afflicted with.

And then, with a soft, delicate kind of pity, Joseph placed his hands on her shoulders and said, “Hurting.”

This was all wrong. The pressure of Joseph’s hands on her shoulders did not quiet the roar in her head, did not bring her any kind of comfort. Nausea welled up inside of her like a black bile; her body wanted to purge it, a venom seeping from a wound. Vaguely, she was aware that she wished he’d said something else—anything else, anything other than _hurting,_ anything that could give her the footing to be angry and furious and spit her poison at him.

But there was nothing.

“You don’t have to keep pushing it down,” he continued, his voice low and almost urgent. “Absolution isn’t out of your reach forever.”

“Shut—” Elliot sucked in a sharp breath; she reached up, but her arms felt like lead weights. “S-Shut the fuck up—”

“Elliot,” Joseph murmured, squeezing her shoulders, “you might be able to convince yourself that you’re fine, but I _see_ you.”

Ase’s glassy eyes, her fingers twisted in Elliot’s. Sisters. _Do you see?_

“Aren’t you tired?” His voice, sliding under her skin, _trying her on._ He was the monster in the dark of the woods, humming as he lifted the edges of her skin and peeled them back. “Aren’t you so tired, Elliot, of all of this running? All of this anger?”

He was too close, now, his hands on her neck, cradling. Joseph leaned in and rumbled, just against her temple, “It must be so hard, living with it every day. I can help you rest.”

Her brain scrambled for a grip, anywhere; she was only vaguely aware of pushing Joseph’s hands off of her shoulders, that they met resistance for a moment before he gave way for her. _Anything, anything but that, don’t fucking look at me, I didn’t say that you could, don’t fucking touch me._

She willed her feet forward. Away from the fence, away from Joseph, away from the church and around the back of one of the buildings.

 _“It’s not uncommon in survivors, Miss Honeysett. The nightmares_ , _reliving the moment_ — _it’ll get better. I promise.”_

But she still felt his hands on her; not Joseph, but _him,_ his hands grabbing her mouth and her hair, pinning her against the door, the taste of copper flooding her mouth when she sank her teeth down and ripped. She still felt the grip when she closed her eyes, and the doctor said it would go away and it would get better, but how long was she supposed to wait? How long was she supposed to feel like this?

 _I see,_ she thought frantically, _the… The grass, and… I hear… I hear_ —

_“I can see that you’re hurting. I’m only here to help; you just have to let me. I can help, Elliot.”_

“Elliot,” John said, sounding surprised to see her come bolting around the corner. He leaned a little, to see where she had come from, and then looked back at her, reaching up. “Why are you breathing so hard? I thought I heard shouting. What’s—”

“Stop,” she bit out, grinding the words between her teeth before she let them out. “Don’t—”

“Okay,” he replied quickly. His hands hovered for a moment before dropping; his gaze drifted again, lingering behind her, before he returned his attention. “Okay, I won’t. Why don’t you sit down?”

 _I_ **_see_ ** _you._

“No!” Elliot snapped, taking in a shaky breath. The adrenaline wouldn’t stop; not even with the distance between herself and Joseph, not even with John’s voice anchoring her to the ground. “No, I’m not fucking—sitting down. Take me to Fall’s End so I can get—so I can get out—so I can—so I—”

She didn’t think when she grabbed John’s arm to steady herself. Looking back on the moment later, she thought maybe it was a force of habit; he’d been around for a lot of moments like this. In the last few days, they’d gotten through a lot. And—

And he hadn’t had to come back for her if he didn’t want to. And he hadn't had to kiss her if he didn’t want to. He didn’t have to do any of those things, and he did them anyway, and somehow she only felt worse than before; it had been easier when she could hate him blindly.

“It’s supposed to storm tonight,” John said, and if he felt anything about the way she was gripping his arm he didn’t say. Something uneasy flickered in his face, and he added, “You should probably wait until tomorrow, deputy.”

“Fuck. Off,” Elliot said. “Take me to Fall’s End or—”

This seemed to reassure him that she was doing fine. John arched a brow at her loftily and said, his voice a light challenge, “Or _what?”_

“Hey, John? Hey?”

“Yes?”

“Fuck you?” It returned a bit of normalcy to see him roll his eyes. Her fingers wadded into his shirt sleeve, she said, “Or I’ll walk there myself.”

“You seem to think that relieving me of the burden of your constant verbal assault is a threat,” John deadpanned. “And besides, you’re in no position to be threatening me _anyway_. You’re the one who didn’t want Joey to know that we—”

_Kissed._

“Sh—” The sharp sound coming out of her mouth was enough to stop John. She glanced over her shoulder; if there was one person she would hate more than Joey to find out about that, it was Joseph. Oh, he’d probably just be _delighted_ . As she swallowed back the lump of anxiety in her throat, she said, more urgently now, “John.” _Please,_ she wanted to say, but she wouldn’t.

He watched her for a long moment. She didn’t know how to tell him that if she spent a second longer with his human scalpel of a brother trying to peel her skin back she was going to lose it. She didn’t know how to say that even though she hated him—even though he’d kidnapped her best friend and teased her with that stupid commercial and considered the logistics of drowning her—in the last few days he’d been _something_ close to reasonable, _something,_ and she wanted desperately to keep that streak going.

“Fine,” John said after a moment of deliberation. “But _only_ you. Hudson would spend the entire time trying to eviscerate me, and I only just got _you_ off that kick.”

 _Bad,_ Elliot’s gut said. But he was right. Joey would have never accepted help from one of the Seeds, and it was best if she stayed here to rest, anyway; she’d been through the worst of it. She could leave Boomer here to help ease her concern, and if someone tried to radio in—either the Resistance members or Burke—it would be better for Joey to make sure they didn’t get lied to.

“Fine,” Elliot repeated, swallowing thickly. “But—we go tonight. Like, right now.”

“Sure, boss.”

She dropped her hand from John’s arm and took in a deep breath, pushing the hair away from her face. When she looked back over her shoulder to where she’d fled from, Joseph was no longer standing there. She had the feeling that he’d been there for a while. Watching.

But she couldn’t think about it much, because John was turning and heading off, talking over his shoulder. “Tell your Hudson that we’re going, and we can head out.”

 _Yeah,_ Elliot thought. _Easy enough._

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It did not, in fact, go over well.

Or, well, that’s what John could glean from what he heard from the outside of the bunkhouse. Hudson wasn’t pleased—but it was easy to see that it was because she didn’t want to have to say that she owed anything to them. In the long run, even _John_ knew that this was the best option.

Well, the best option was probably not having Elliot do anything. 

“Hudson’s a problem,” Jacob said, arms crossed over his chest as John stood leaned up against the front of the truck. Absently, he swung the key ring around his finger.

“It’s fine.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be convincing Honeysett to stick around?” Jacob muttered. “Seems like giving them the resources to fuck off is the opposite of that.”

“What did you say to Joseph?” he asked, ignoring his older brother’s comment regarding what he was supposed to be doing or not doing. “Before I talked to him last night.”

Jacob slid his gaze to him. For a second, he didn’t say anything, like he was trying to parse out what exactly it was that John was asking him. Because it wasn’t just _what did you say to Joseph,_ it was _what did you two talk about,_ and he wasn’t sure he was going to get even _close_ to the answer that he wanted.

“Just told him what you told me,” the redhead replied, uncrossing his arms and letting them drop to his side. “Burke’s gone. _That’s_ a problem, too.” Another pause, and then: “Seems like we have a lot of problems around here as of late.”

John watched his eldest brother’s receding silhouette. _What the fuck does that mean?_ He wanted to say, but there was no time—Jacob would almost certainly indulge him, and if he derailed Elliot’s plan anymore than it already was, he’d almost certainly get strangled. In the less-fun way.

The door to the bunkhouse opened, and Elliot came out with Hudson trailing close behind. Seeing the two of them together just reminded him, again, of the last time the three of them had been in the same space together. 

_I don’t know which,_ Elliot had said, like there was a John she’d want to kiss, and she needed to find him.

“Are we going?” Her voice, brisk as it normally was, ripped him out of the memory as she reached to take the keys from his hand.

He lifted them just out of reach. “At your leisure,” John quipped, “my _liege._ ”

“Bring her back, alive and in one piece,” Hudson ground out. “I’m _only_ staying in case the Resistance radios in, and to keep an eye on your stupid brothers. If I had my way—”

“I’d be dead, the Resistance would be flourishing, the cops would be flooding this place, yada yada.” John waved his hand absently. “A pleasure as always, Deputy Hudson.”

“Don’t instigate her,” Elliot sighed. “You sound like a fuckhead.”

“He _is_ a fuckhead,” Joey bit out. “Elli, I’m serious—I can come. You don’t have to—”

And then, in what John thought could only be a surprising act of self-control, she stopped herself. She stopped herself and didn’t finish her sentence, and the moment stretched long and unspoken between the two of them.

More than ever, John felt like the intruder, the interloper. Where he had thought Hudson would need to get used to the tenuous and tentative teamwork he and Elliot had been building, it now felt _painfully_ apparent that the person that was going to be on the outside was _him._

“I know,” Elliot replied after a moment. “I know, and I’m—it’ll be okay, I’ll be back soon, okay? John, I’m driving.”

“I don’t feel like dying.”

“You drive like an old man,” she quipped, and when he arched a brow at her as if to remind her that she’d never once experienced his driving, she said, “ _probably,_ in comparison to me—”

“—right, yeah, the woman who drives like she’s on Monster Jam. I think I’ll pass on the adrenaline rush, but thank you.”

“ _Fine,_ ” Elliot sighed. “You’re _so_ annoying.”

He headed around the front of the truck. Elliot exchanged a few softer, quieter words that he couldn’t quite make out with Hudson and then slid into the seat next to him, buckling up and settling back against the seat with a sigh. As soon as they had pulled out of the compound, she seemed to visibly relax; whatever tension had been holding her shoulders so close to her face had fled.

“Do you want to play a game?” John asked conversationally, after they’d been on the road for about ten minutes; he anticipated her answer but asked anyway. Part because the silence made him uneasy, and part because there was a small chance she’d say yes.

“No.” And then, moving on the offensive: “Do you really believe it?” she asked, and when John waited for her to elaborate, she continued, “All of this—bullshit. That Joseph is saying about the end times, and—”

John cleared his throat. He’d figured this question would come up sooner or later. He’d just hoped to have had more time, first. “I believe in Joseph,” he said after a moment, skimming his hands along the steering wheel. “I always—Joseph has always had our best interests in mind. And he hasn’t been _wrong_ , you know.”

“So far,” Elliot pointed out.

“Yeah, well, that’s still a pretty good record.” He could feel himself getting defensive. “I spent—our parents, they—”

And then the words stopped coming out. They halted in his throat, dragging, shredding inside of him. _I spent my whole life waiting for something to say yes to._

“Anyway,” John continued after a moment, eyes grazing the incoming storm clouds, “I would do anything for my family.”

“Ah.” And that was all she said. For some reason, it really dug at him—didn’t she want to push and press, slam on his berserk button until he couldn’t stand it anymore? John let the silence stretch between them for a bit longer before he glanced over at her.

She was about half-asleep in the passenger seat. Every time her eyes began to drift, they’d suddenly flutter awake; without her brows furrowing and her mouth set into a hard line, she looked like she had when he’d seen her in that bar, years ago. _Soft,_ he thought absently as wisps of her hair fell out of her ponytail.

He was reminded briefly of how Jacob had once told him, back when they were kids, that an animal feeling comfortable enough to sleep around you was a sign of trust; and _then_ he thought about how much he was sure Elliot would murder him for even drawing those parallels.

“What were you doing?” he asked, when he saw her eyes stay open for longer than a few seconds. “When I ran into you, I mean. Back at the compound.”

A grimace crossed the blonde’s face. She rubbed her forehead tiredly. “Just thinking.”

“That is _quite_ a chore,” John agreed, and she shot him a scowl.

“Fuck you.”

“If you ask,” he agreed, “politely.”

 _That_ bloomed the red in her face, so fair was her skin that it was visible almost instantly. For once, she had no rapidfire response ready. He could hear the gears of her brain grinding and hitching before she finally said, “Stupid.”

John tried not to seem too pleased. Rain began to fall—steady at first, and then pelting the windshield with what felt like baseball sized raindrops. John slowed down as they took a corner, grimacing.

“I don’t want you to tell Joey,” Elliot said after a moment, with no context, though he had an idea of what she meant and it made something sharp and prickly coil in his stomach, right there under his heartbeat. Still, he feigned innocence.

“About—?” he prompted, but before she could clarify he plunged on. “That I’d do anything for my family? Or about how if you asked nicely I’d—”

“The kiss,” Elliot bit out, scoffing under her breath. “You fucking narcissist.”

“That’s still about me,” he pointed out, slowing down more as the wind picked up. “I really don’t think we’re gonna beat the storm.”

“ _John.”_

“Well!” He exhaled sharply. “What, you don’t want your _best friend_ to know that I kissed you—”

“I’m serious—”

“—and you kissed me _back?”_

“Yes!” She snapped. “That’s exactly right! Good job, John, do you want a medal for your skills in critical thinking? I know that must have been a real fucking _strain_ for you.”

 _Great,_ he thought dryly. _Glad she’s back up to full steam._ “And why not?” he demanded. “Seems like you and Hudson don’t keep anything from each other.”

“Because she’s going to ask _why_ ,” Elliot replied finally, after she let a long heartbeat wind its way between them, “and I don’t—I won’t have an answer, because I don’t know.”

It was his turn to be quiet. He might have been more discouraged—and fairly—if his brain didn’t keep turning over the fact that she hadn’t denied kissing him back. Not even for a second.

_I think you’re doing a great job with the deputy._

In an effort to ease the tension, and ignore Joseph’s voice lingering in his head, John offered, “If she asks that, you could just be honest.”

Elliot waited, because he supposed that she knew he wasn’t done talking; but it wasn’t any fun if she wasn’t going to walk into the punchline, so _he_ waited, too. And when she finally said, “And how would I answer, then, John?” tiredly, he settled back into the seat comfortably.

“That I’m handsome, and irresistible, and there is an _undeniable_ —” He ignored her infuriated groan and plunged on, “—attraction between us.”

“I have an incredible idea. Let’s play the “John shuts the fuck up and gets Elliot to town” game.”

“Now you’re just being _mean._ ”

A little laugh came out of her at that—the first time John thought he’d heard her laugh in a _long_ time, even considering that they’d only been at this for a little under a week. The sound made a pleasant warmth bloom in him.

“Just focus on getting us to town, grandpa,” she said. “Then we can talk about how mean I am.”

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By the time they got to Fall’s End, the storm had started to hit in full force. John barely managed to pull the truck in front of the Spread Eagle before he watched the wind lean a telephone pole hard left.

“We’re not driving back until this storm is done,” he told Elliot, over the screaming wind. Thunder rumbled, rattling deep inside of the cavity of his chest; two seconds outside of the truck had them drenched, clothes sticking to them.

“Then we’ll have plenty of time to collect up supplies,” she called back, pushing the door of the bar open and stepping inside. John followed suit; he even held his breath, just for a second, with the idea that maybe the Resistance hadn’t left when she’d told them to. But inside it was quiet; the lights were down, presumably from the storm, and all he could hear was the faint sound of the rain pelting the windows and the thunder rolling outside. 

Elliot said, in a sigh of relief, “They left.” John threw the lock on the front door just for good measure—not that he thought Ase’s men would be out in this kind of storm—and then followed her further into the bar. 

“I’m glad that we’re able to get… Fireball for you and Hudson,” John remarked as he inspected one of the bottles, and Elliot scrunched up her face.

“Gross.”

“What? You’re a little country bumpkin. Don’t you love Fireball?”

“Um,” Elliot said, “fuck you. Call me a country bumpkin again, John.” She busied herself with picking up one of the plastic crates and filling it with dry foods, muttering crossly under her breath. He watched her deliberate for a moment before she picked up one of the nicer bottles of vodka and planted it in the crate.

“I’m scandalized!” he exclaimed. “Can’t wait to tell Jacob I drove you down here for you to get _alcohol_.”

“That’s not the _only_ thing,” she protested, “and we still have to stop by my house. Once the storm clears up.”

It didn’t pass John’s attention that Elliot hadn’t argued with him about driving in a storm like she had before, nor that she seemed to be a thousand yards more relaxed than she had been in the compound. Her hands moved with a different surety now, a different kind of confidence that had been missing before; sleep, he thought, and a day or two without getting drugged would do that to a person.

“Well, _I’m_ going to take a shot,” John announced, shivering. “Before I die of exposure.”

She eyed him warily but continued to busy herself; though her clothes were drenched too, her shivering was purely physical, shuddering in her shoulders and back but not once rattling her teeth or hands. The blonde pushed the wet hair from her face on occasion, and sometimes sniffled, but as John poured himself a shot he thought that she seemed much more composed.

John made his way over to where she was packing things up behind the bar, reaching around her from behind to set a shot down in front of her.

“I’ll take back that I called you bumpkin,” he said lightly, “if you take this shot with me.”

“We’re here to get supplies, John,” she replied flatly.

“And we’re stuck until the storm blows over.”

Elliot narrowed her eyes. She was certainly considering a number of things—the fact that they would be leaving as soon as the storm was done, he would assume—but then, as though she had worked herself up to it, she snatched the shot glass off of the table and took it. John quickly followed suit, but not without a noise of protest.

“That _isn’t_ how you take a shot,” he told her, watching her mouth twist at the taste. “You’re supposed to tap the bar first.”

“I was going to lose my nerve,” she defended, and for once that idea that Elliot was admitting that she had nerve that could be lost made John feel a _little_ good. “ _Yuck._ I told you Fireball was bad.”

“I take it back. You’re not a bumpkin. You’re a very sophisticated, intelligent, beautiful woman, who just happens to want to live in the country, for some reason.”

Something about what he’d said made her attitude falter, disappearing right before his eyes as her cheeks heated up from his words. She said, after a moment, “Why are you trying to get me to drink, anyway?”

The question was a fair one, he supposed, though as he leaned against the bar near to her he shrugged. “Well,” he began, “it’s fucking cold, for one. For two, since Hudson spirited away when we first met, I never got the chance to figure out what would have happened if you’d stayed.”

The blonde returned to keeping her hands busy, moving briskly. “ _I_ know,” she said, more confidently than he would have expected, and he arched a brow at her.

“And what would have happened, then?”

“I would have gone home with you,” Elliot replied, without missing a beat, sucking the wind _right_ out of his sails. And it was that easy, too; _I would have gone home with you,_ she’d said, like it was nothing, like it didn’t matter that this whole time she’d been fighting him at every turn but was now openly admitting that she had wanted him then.

 _She would have been mine,_ something wicked in him whispered, pulling itself out of the dark recesses of his mind. _I would have had her, all to myself, for all this time. She’d have been my monster of Wrath. Think about how obedient she would be now._

Before John could say anything, she continued, “Because I was young, and stupid, and we should be thankful that I’m not the same girl I was then.”

He studied her for a moment, watched the way that she absently pushed the damp hair from her face, the way the heat spread in her cheeks. And he said, “Pretend, then.”

Her hands stilled, and she looked at him. “Pretend _what?”_

“We’re in a bar,” John replied, closing what little distance remained between them, his hand on the bar beside her, gently and half-way boxing her in. “You’re Junior Deputy Elliot, as you are _now_ , and I’m me. Pretend that we’re just in a bar together, and that you’re not a stupid, young girl that was just charmed by me.”

There were a few moments of silence; moments where John thought he might have spooked her off, ignited that hairpin fight-or-flight inside of her, but she didn’t seem like she had adrenaline running through her body; she just seemed to be _figuring it out._

“I can’t,” she said after a moment.

“You can’t,” John repeated.

“Yeah. Because—” She stopped, and then said, “we’re behind the bar. If we’re customers, we wouldn’t—”

John couldn’t stop the short, barked laugh that came out of him. The absurdity of the moment just struck him too hard; and when _he_ laughed, Elliot frowned, turning to face him fully and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well, it’s true!” she exclaimed. “You can’t ask me to roleplay a situation and then put me in the wrong location.”

“Unreal.” John reached up absently, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. “I cannot believe you just completely ruined the moment.”

“It’s not like we were going to kiss.”

“Oh, it’s not?” His hand drifted from where it had been tucking away her hair down, resting at the juncture between her neck and shoulder. The gesture made her eyes flutter; just the sight of _that_ had something pleasant twisting in John’s stomach, this wild little animal blushing from just a little teasing, just a little touch. How touch-starved was his little hellcat, he wondered? How much could he wring out of her, just like this? “We didn’t even go through the whole scenario, you don’t know.”

“I _know_ ,” Elliot said, even as John leaned in closer, even as her arms seemed to instinctively drop from where they were crossed to allow him to crowd in. The meaning of the gesture wasn’t lost on John—he’d seen the way she’d acted when other people touched her, aside from Hudson. The way she threw up a wall or a hand the second someone got in her space. It made it all feel _different._

There was a strange moment suspended between them; the air felt thick and syrupy, humid from the storm outside and their drenched clothes and _something else,_ bubbling and fizzing. _She would have been mine,_ that voice said again. _Mine, and not anyone else’s. Not Joseph’s and not Jacob’s and and and._

A thick rumble of thunder rolled just above them; John’s thumb skimmed just over Elliot’s pulsepoint. Her heartbeat flickered at the touch, beats after the sound, so that he knew exactly what had caused it. _Him._

_She still could be our little hellcat. Our little monster. Our little killer._

“John,” she started, maybe by way of warning, maybe for something else; he leaned in, felt her shoulders tighten with tension or anticipation or both.

 _So good, John,_ she’d have said, sweet and obedient and _his,_ when he finally got his hands on her, and the sweet cadence of her voice would hitch just the way that he liked. _You feel so good, nobody else has ever made me feel like you, I’d do anything for you, yes yes yes._

“I meant it back then.” His hands itched for it, now that the words were turning over and over in his head, now that he was letting the days of frustration and anger fade for just a moment. His voice came out in a murmur. “When I called you beautiful. That hasn’t changed.”

She sucked in a little breath, like she was trying to steel herself. “Don’t fucking play with me.”

“I’m not.” John skimmed his fingers up to her jaw; her chin tilted up like nothing, as though she already knew what he wanted and she wanted it too, and it suddenly all felt like a little bit too much; too raw, scraping against exposed nerve-endings, all of those times she’d spit on his work or bite out an insult into the walkie or dig her nails into him until he’d bled or tried to kill a man for touching her, all blending into sharp edges that caught and tore the closer they got to each other. John would twist and writhe his way in past them, if she gave him the chance—so that he could get elbows-deep in the gore and grit of her, really sink his teeth in.

 _So much wrath,_ he thought, when their noses brushed. _So much wrath, and look at how sweet she is for me now._

What patience he’d been exerting was rewarded; Elliot closed the last of the distance between them and kissed him. She tasted like cinnamon-whiskey and a little like rain; he wouldn’t have wanted someone less, he thought, someone less wrathful. He _liked_ the infernal in her—he was supposed to be wiping it out, breaking it in his hands and shaping it into obedience, but he liked that when her lips parted and she sighed into the kiss that something felt carnal about that simple, plain gesture alone, because the knowledge of what she was capable of and what she didn’t let others do made this kind of thing feel _more._

A heavy gust of wind rattled the front door in its frame; the sound of it, wood colliding and metal shuddering against the strain of keeping it in place, made Elliot jump and pull away. It took all of his willpower not to chase her body heat. Instead, he stayed exactly where he was—perfectly within reach of her, and he thought for a moment that Joseph had been right: she would have never cowed to his methods. This was the only way to—

_To what? Break her in? Make her mine?_

“I can’t,” Elliot said again, the words brushing their lips together, and this time he hadn’t asked her to do anything so he knew what she meant. “I don’t know what kind of game—”

He felt her pulse jump under his fingers again. “No game.”

“There’s always a game,” she protested.

“Maybe I just want to kiss you,” John offered, and leaned in just a little again, keeping his voice low. “Have you thought about that? Maybe, I just like the way you are when I kiss you.”

Elliot’s head tilted out of reach. He could feel the heat blooming on her cheeks, even in the dark. “Oh,” she said. He waited for an elaboration, and it was several heartbeats before she continued, “You make me so fucking mad.”

John exhaled a sharp breath, hand dropping from her as he lugged most of his weight against the bar top. “It must be so exhausting,” he said, “doing the amount of mental gymnastics you have to do every day to pretend like you don’t want to kiss me back.”

“Well, I—” Her eyelashes fluttered, and she set her jaw, and John could see she was doing that thing where she readied herself for some kind of blow. “It’s—different. When you’re like this.”

“Like…?”

Elliot sighed. “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said, turning back to the crate full of supplies and nudging it out of the way to make room for a second. As the wind howled outside, and rain pounded against the roof and windows, John thought that the most infuriating thing about Elliot was that she’d run her mouth for days and was now deciding to be tight-lipped.

“No, please, continue,” he insisted, his words coming out tight. “I’m just dying to know your official diagnosis of me, Deputy Honeysett. While we’re at it, why don’t we do the whole group? Jacob, Joseph, me, and Faith. You _are_ the authority on fuck-ups, aren’t you?”

“You don’t _owe_ him,” Elliot snapped. Her gaze was hard when she turned to look at him, her words a vicious parry of his anger. “You don’t owe Joseph your blood and guts all the time.”

“He gave me everything,” John bit out. “He’s my brother.”

“So _what?”_ She ground the words on their way out of her mouth. “So _fucking what,_ John? You think I bend over backwards for my mama while she drinks herself to death every fucking day? No, I don’t. I don’t grovel for her affection, I don’t kiss the fucking ground she walks on just because she brought me into this world, and that’s more than you can say Joseph did for you. So I’ll say it again—so fucking what, he’s your brother? What does it fucking matter?”

 _I don’t know,_ John thought, his brain scrambling to piece together a response. But nothing came. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to explain to Elliot that before-Joseph and after-Joseph were so drastically different, and that if he went back to before-Joseph, he didn’t know who he was going to be.

“I don’t,” John managed out after a moment, all of her softness gone. He’d misstepped on his way in, and now those jagged edges were latching on to him; no room to back out and escape her dissection, no room to delve in deep and find refuge in the space between her ribs, either. “Do that, for him.”

“You _do,”_ Elliot snipped, turning to him now. “I’ve seen it. I told you I have. You’re not _that_ stupid, John.”

Her words lit something angry in him—something wounded, something hurt, something that wanted desperately for Joseph to tell him he did a good job and that didn’t want to admit it. “Well, that can’t be true,” he said, “because Joseph didn’t ask me to go back for you at the campground, and I did anyway. So what’s your diagnosis on _that_ , Doctor Honeysett?”

Elliot’s baby-blues flickered for a moment, impatient to exit the conversation but unwilling to relinquish any ground she’d gotten. _She is so fucking stubborn,_ he thought as he watched the tension in her jaw. _So fucking stubborn, even when she practically crumbles the second I touch her._

“I don’t know,” she said finally.

“Well I _do_ ,” John replied angrily, “and it’s that outside of my loyalty to Joseph, there’s you, and I want both.”

“Fuck you.” Her words weren’t _angry_ now, but strained, scrambling for a foothold somewhere; _not a damsel in distress, but a damsel under duress,_ Joseph had said. “You sound so—fucking stupid saying shit you don’t—”

He kissed her again—no tentative questioning, now, no delicate pauses between breaths to try not to spook her. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, pinned in the corner of the bar between the terminal and the bar top itself; John waited for any sign that she wanted him to stop, but her fingers fisted the front of his shirt and kept him there.

“I _do_ mean it,” he said against her mouth, fingers threading in her hair, just at the base of her scalp. “I want you _too_ , Elliot.”

“You—can’t,” she said. “You can’t have both. I won’t—”

 _I can,_ John thought furiously as he kissed her again, as he felt her tense and then relax against him, like each touch was a potential for vicious impact but it turned out not to be. Not quite, anyway. She still felt sharp, like he had to slide past each jagged every time he went to kiss her, but it was worth it, to hear her say his name against their kiss. _I can,_ he thought again, a mantra. To grip too tight or to hold loosely; he didn’t know, but he was afraid of the departure, so he held tighter. _I can. You’re mine, and I can have both._

_I will have both._

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The storm didn’t let up, which meant that Elliot was trapped—with John, with what she’d done, with what she’d let herself do. Kiss—and enjoy kissing—John Seed.

It had been stupid to indulge again. It had been stupid to let herself take his words— _I want both_ —at face value because John had proven time and time again that even _he_ couldn’t swallow back the duality of his own existence. The bark and the bite. But though she wanted desperately to pretend as though she didn’t want or feel anything, though she wished that she could wipe the memories from her mind forever, John’s hands on her face grounded her; they rooted her to the earth, and he didn’t kiss her like any man had ever kissed her before. It was like he was _starved_ for her.

A vicious gust of wind rattling the front door of the Spread Eagle had broken the moment. John went to the window to make sure it was just wind, and without the smell of him and the heat of him muddying up her conscience, she could busy herself. Loading supplies, gathering whatever she could that Mary May had been holding on to and hadn’t taken with her when they left, because tomorrow she and Joey would be gone, and she would be able to forget about John Seed and the glimpses of goodness and patience she had seen in him, in equal parts with his anger and cruelty.

And she could forget about how she liked those parts, too, because they felt like her _own,_ like someone knew exactly what she felt and was going to accept those parts of her anyway.

By the time they had finished loading stuff up in the truck through quick darts back and forth, the storm had mostly slowed down to rain. John’s teeth chattered as they loaded up into the truck and then pulled around and down the street to Elliot’s house, the heat cranked and the radio flipped off, leaving them with only the sound of the rain to mitigate whatever lingered loud and sharp between them.

“I’ll wait here,” John said, rubbing his hands together. “If you go quick we might be able to make it back before this picks up again.”

“Got it,” Elliot replied briskly, grateful that he wasn’t going to push to come in. He seemed just as deep in his thoughts as she felt, which meant maybe she’d get some peace and quiet on their way back. 

She nudged the door open and ducked into the house, fumbling under the mat for the spare key before opening the door and stepping inside. It might have been a little bit of a mistake to come back home. The smell of _her house_ —a little like pine and her fabric softener, because she’d just ran a load of laundry before all this happened—hit her _hard._ It sucked all of the air out of her lungs, ripped it right out of her, gutted her instantly.

 _My home,_ she thought, with a sense of finality. Because she would never be coming back. She would never come back to this little house, even if Joseph got put down, even if the Family got cleaned out of Hope County. There was a part of Elliot that understood she would never be able to be happy here, not again.

She stuffed clothes, photographs, some books into a bag. She took the time to change into something dry and warm, pulling socks up and lacing herself into some boots. There wasn’t time to take everything that she wanted, everything that mattered, but she had started over her whole life once before and she thought that she could do it again.

It felt like perhaps an eternity had passed as she moved through her house and tried to pick and choose what mattered enough to come with her; in reality, it was probably only ten minutes, but her grip on time seemed to slip away the second she was in the safety of her house, of her own clothes, around her things.

 _I’m really leaving_ . The thought swept through her brain violently as she closed the door behind her, zipping up her jacket against the chilly nighttime winds. _I’m really never coming back._

Elliot tossed the bag into the back seat, among the other supplies, and then settled into the seat. John looked at the small bag, and then back at her.

“Got everything?” he asked, and what he meant was, _is that really all you wanted?_

“Got everything,” Elliot replied. She kept her eyes fixed forward, because she thought if she looked over at John and saw the way _he_ was looking at her, she might actually come unglued.

The brunette only waited for a moment longer before he pulled out from in front of her house and then drove them out of Fall’s End. The bar, the church, her house; they all faded away in the rearview mirror of the truck, perhaps the last time she would ever set eyes on the place that had always taken her back and held her—in the way that her mother hadn’t, the way her father hadn’t, the way nobody else had.

John stayed blissfully quiet for the car ride. He didn’t bring up their moment in the bar, or anything that she’d said, but just drove them diligently back to the compound. It was the first time that he’d opted to stay quiet of his own volition, and she was grateful for it.

_I want both._

She didn’t know what that meant. She knew what he was saying—in a perfect world, John Seed would have Joseph’s approval _and_ she wouldn’t want to kill his siblings, _and_ she’d stick around and just drop everything she had spent this entire time suffering for. But she didn’t know what it meant, what it _really meant to John,_ when he was saying it to her with his fingers tangled in her hair and his mouth on hers.

It was early morning by the time they got back to the compound, dawn just beginning to creep over the distant mountain range and the rain having slowed. John turned the truck off, the engine ticking as it cooled, and for a second they just sat there, the sound of the rain in the early morning swallowing them up in the cab of the truck.

And then, Elliot said, “I’m really leaving,” at the same time as John said, “You don’t have to go,” and the silence was _really_ awkward then, stretching out endlessly between them. John exhaled sharply, rubbing the back of his neck.

“If you go, it won’t be the end,” he finally continued. “They could catch you and Joey on your way out. Even if they don’t, Burke got out—this whole thing is far from over.”

“So—” Elliot stopped herself, trying to find some composure somewhere inside of her. “—why are you _staying_ , then?”

It wasn’t like she was asking John to come with them. She just didn’t understand the need to stay and burn.

“I told you,” John replied after a moment. “They’re my family.”

The words made her tired. She pushed the door open, a gust of cold wind hitting her and sobering her almost immediately.

“Elliot—”

“I’ve got a lot to do, John,” she said, hauling one crate and then another out of the truck before stacking them and lifting them into her arms. Her muscles screamed at the effort, but it was a good kind of burn—the kind that reminded her that she was alive. The kind that reminded her she was real.

John said, “Okay, El,” as she hauled her things back to the bunkhouse.

 _Okay,_ she thought. _Okay, okay, whatever you say, John._

It would just make it easier in the morning, anyway.

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Elliot spent the entirety of the morning ignoring him. It was probably for the best, anyway; John had a distinct feeling that any conversation between the two of them was only going to end up tense at best, and explosive at worst. He didn’t know how he was going to tell Joseph that they weren’t sticking around.

Another problem for another time.

Once, when the sun came out, he passed Joey on his way to the church. She stopped and looked like she wanted to say something; even when she finally got around to it, her words were clipped.

“Thanks for bringing her back,” the brunette said, watching him warily.

“I wasn’t going to leave her at Fall’s End. _You’re_ not the deputy I want,” John replied dryly, knowing full well that Joey thought he had some nefarious plan to keep Elliot stuck there. _Well, she’s not that far off, anyway._

Joey’s lips twisted into a grimace. She said, “I meant before. From the campground. I know you didn’t have to, and Jacob’s pissed you did, so.”

 _Oh,_ John thought, not having expected that. He cleared his throat and tried to figure out how it was he wanted to respond—there was no formula in his brain on how to disarm or parry Hudson when she was being genuine.

Before he could come up with something, she said, “Anyway, that’s all,” and turned to head off, walking briskly, effectively ending their conversation and reminding John that their time together was rapidly drawing to a close.

The morning bled into the afternoon. It was a beautiful Fall day, after all of the rain and wind that had been plummeting Hope County into something wretched. John thought that Elliot had to be sleeping off their little adventure in Fall’s End—another event and space in time that he wanted both to lock away forever and keep at the forefront of his mind in equal amounts.

“Hey, fuckhead!”

His head snapped immediately to the front of the yard. They’d been back since early dawn, but he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Elliot, or even Joey after their little run-in; John was still stuck trying to figure out a way to get them to stay—tell them they couldn’t take a truck, maybe, but even though he knew that’d slow them down, he also knew that Elliot and Joey would carry their shit on foot if they had to, and Elliot wouldn’t be staying without Joey.

However, the problem at hand had immediately made itself apparent; Jacob, turning a truck off after having pulled up next to the one that she had just emptied out and Elliot, stalking across the yard, _vibrating_ with fury. He could feel it from here.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, feeling eyes turn to the commotion. Faith watched him inquisitively from the doorway of the church, leaned against it with the dark circles ringing her eyes. He took in a sharp breath. “Hold on, I’ll—one minute—”

“I’m tired, deputy,” he heard Jacob drawl as he opened the driver’s side door, one leg sliding out. “Don’t you think you can wait to...”

Elliot kicked the driver’s side door _hard_ , in a spartan-like gesture that would have been impressive if it wasn’t so alarming, slamming it on Jacob’s leg and drawing from his eldest brother a bit-out swear that made John think perhaps Elliot was going to be hurtling herself toward death imminently; and maybe Elliot knew that too, but if she did, she didn’t care.

Jacob climbed all the way out of the truck and closed the driver’s side door, the frame rattling from the force of the gesture. _Bad_ , John thought faintly, idly, somewhere very far away from himself. _Bad, so fucking bad, what the fuck._

“Hey,” John said, coming around the front of the truck feeling something close to panic at the way Jacob’s expression darkened. “Deputy, let’s—”

“Where the fuck is she?” the blonde demanded. John hooked one arm around her waist the second she started taking another step toward Jacob—not just because he thought Elliot might actually put her teeth in Jacob if she got the chance, but because he also thought that Jacob wouldn’t skip out on an opportunity to try and teach her a lesson. Regardless, John’s presence meant next to nothing; she pushed at his arm with vigor, but her vitriol remained pointed at the redhead. “What the fuck did you do with her, you stupid fucking caveman?”

“Muzzle your fucking beast,” Jacob snapped, his words overlapping Elliot’s. The collision of their voices in apparent discord—Elliot’s high, frantic note of hysteria and fury brutalizing the darker timbre of Jacob’s voice—clattered around in John’s tired brain violently; Elliot squirmed in his grip, and the idea that she might try and headbutt him passed briefly through his mind.

“Yeah, _John_ .” Elliot dripped the words in a sticky honey on their way out of her mouth. She was practically sweating poison, her thrashing stilled for a moment as she used that same eerie, cloying sweetness she had before, with Jace. **_You’d_ ** _let me walk around, wouldn’t you?_ Except now it was pointed at him, this saccharine tone, _begging_ him to do it. “Muzzle your _beast,_ poor Jacob’s _scared_ I’ll fucking kill him.”

Not how he wanted this. Not like this. _Fuck fuck fuck._ “Elliot—”

A half-cocked grin split across Jacob’s face. He leaned forward, almost within grabbing reach of Elliot. “Yeah? You think you could do it, little girl?”

“We’re not doing this,” John insisted, hauling the blonde back a few feet. “Alright? We’re not doing—”

It was only them, the two of them in the whole world—Jacob and Elliot, desperate to rip each other apart, and John was just the poor fool stuck in the middle.

“Get John to let me go,” Elliot bit out, “and _fucking find out._ I know you did something to her, and when I find out I’ll fucking kill you—you and your stupid fucking brother and every single Peggy that tries—”

“Okay, alright—” John turned, dragging the blonde— _she’s so tiny, how is it so hard to take her anywhere_ —and started walking her toward the bunkhouse. She dug her feet into the dirt, but he thankfully had an advantage on her in _that_ respect. “We’re done here.”

With his arms locked around her, and wisps of her hair sticking to his face, he heard Jacob call from behind him leisurely, “Only one thing to do with a rabid dog, John.”

_Put it down._

The sentence completed itself against his will in the confines of his mind. He knew already what Jacob was thinking, but that was a problem for another time.

“In we go,” John said, releasing one grip to open the door. The bunkhouse was _empty_ , which suddenly made Elliot’s venom and anger make more sense.

“She’s _gone!”_ Her voice was _almost_ a wail, and as she pulled herself out of John’s grip she began to pace, frantically. “She’s fucking gone and I _know_ he did something, what the fuck was he doing out of the compound? He hates Hudson. I know he does. He did something to her, John—”

He held up his hands to steady her, reaching, but she smacked his hand away.

“Move,” she bit out.

“You can’t kill Jacob,” John replied.

 _“Fuck. You.”_ For a second, he thought that she might actually try to kill him. Her eyes swept over him in a way that they hadn’t before— _calculating,_ figuring out the logistics of strangling him or not, the same way that he’d seen her regard other members of Eden’s Gate, the same way she had looked just before smashing a man’s face in with a shovel. 

It seemed her brain came to some conclusion, because instead of trying to kill him she moved to go past him again, but he was faster. His arm hooked around her waist again and hauled her back from the door.

“I don’t mean that for lack of trying,” John snapped, “I mean that Jacob will kill you _first_.”

She made a wrecked, agonized noise and tried to squirm out of his grip again, but he locked it in tight; the noise was enough to rattle his skeleton, enough to make his stomach twist, but he held fast.

Elliot said, distressed now, “I have to find Joey, I have to—what did he _do_ with her—”

A frantic kind of panic was spilling out of her, bleeding into him, too. She was going to go out there and try to kill Jacob if he didn’t put a stop to it, and though there was a part of him that wanted to let her try—to see how much she could actually do against Jacob—he knew better.

“El,” he said, “don’t. Jacob didn’t do anything to her.” He didn’t know that for sure, but that would be a problem for another time.

“I have to find her,” Elliot insisted, her voice breaking. “I have to, John—”

“We will.” His words seemed to cut straight through the panic, right down to the grit of it, and she stopped trying to split past him. Her hands were trembling though, the blood having fled them as she gripped him.

“Find her,” she gritted out. “ _Please.”_

 _Please._ John couldn’t remember a time that she’d asked him like that, with politeness. With sincerity. Maybe she had—but it was hard to pick out those moments in all the rage, all of the wrath.

“I will,” John managed out, after those baby blues had him pinned. “I will, El, okay? I’ll find her.”

“Promise me.” Urgency flooded her voice; her eyes flickered over his face, as though to check for a lie, some kind of tell that would out him; but she would find none, because there _were_ none. There was no universe, John thought, where he would say he’d find her and he didn’t mean it. To what end, anyway? She’d leave if he did. “Promise me, I can’t do it by myself.”

“I do.” He took her face in his hands; all of the blood which had fled her fingers was in her face, feverish with panic. Her breath wobbled in her mouth frantically; it was the first time he’d seen her so close to tears without the horror of a bad trip dragging her down.

John knew that he was toeing a fine line between helping Elliot and keeping her. He knew that he couldn’t say he wouldn’t, or he’d risk ruining everything that had been so delicately built between them—but finding Joey would enable them to go. And then what would he do?

_Anything I have to._

“I promise.”


	13. that unwanted animal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John "Mine is a noun if you capitalize it" Seed makes his appearance, even though we knew he was here all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so truth time, I actually wrote this entire chapter like a fucking maniac in a single day--the day after I put out chapter 12, in fact--and so I had like, a bit of a crisis where I thought it might actually be garbage because that's insane. So I sat on it for a few days and had three pairs of eyeballs on it and HERE IT IS. I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Thank you to @baeogorath & @lilwritingraven for putting your eyeballs on this and making sure I wasn't writing, like, a crack fic come chapter 13 (it WAS debatable for a moment)!!! And of course thank you to @starcrier, my lover my life my shawty my wife; thank you for enabling me always to write the most self-indulgent things and then polish them up to be actually GOOD.
> 
> Warnings include: some steaminess--nothing VERY explicit, but it begins, a little--and might be considered "dubious" if you squint your eyes (but it isn't). Gore, character death, just general Pain and Suffering occurs pretty much nonstop. Par for the course at this point.

“She was going to try and kill me.”

It was a problem, John thought—Elliot’s pure and unabridged fury in that moment almost got her killed. She would have gone down swinging, to be sure, but she _would have_ gone down, eventually. A problem, sure, but one that had been mitigated. He’d handled it. Just like he’d handled everything else.

He said, “But she didn’t. Besides, are you really afraid of what she would have done? She’s _barely_ half your size.”

“It’s not about what she’s capable of, little brother,” Jacob bit out, “it’s about the fact that she’s _your_ responsibility to control and you seem wholly incapable—”

“—a _process_ , Jacob, you can’t just slap a saddle on a pony and expect it to ride—”

“—wouldn’t have happened if _I_ was in charge of her—”

“What’s important now,” Joseph interrupted, pausing a moment to wait and make sure neither John nor Jacob was going to talk over him, “is that Deputy Hudson is missing.”

Yes, that _was_ the biggest problem now—sans the mere existence of the Family. As they sat in the chapel, Joseph pacing to the front absently as he mulled over the day’s events and Jacob refusing to sit but rather _looming_ in the corner of John’s vision, he thought there was a chance that they’d say it was a waste of time to find her.

“I think,” Joseph continued, “we could allocate a small number of men—”

“Stop.” Jacob’s voice was hard. “We’re not wasting resources to find Hudson. We _should_ be using resources to find Burke, because if he made it out he’ll have the government coming down on us any minute. Hudson is _nothing.”_

For a second, his two older brothers stared at each other; Jacob, steely and sharp, and Joseph, eerie in his stillness. They stayed silent for the entire duration, which was probably only a few seconds but in fact felt like an _eternity_ , before Joseph spoke.

“We _will_ allocate a small number of men,” he said, carefully and purposefully articulating each consonant in every word of the sentence which had shifted from a _could_ to a _will,_ “to scout the area. We need information on where the cult is moving. If we happen to find Hudson in the meantime, then we’ll have done the deputy a favor.”

There was another long pause. Then: “ _Fine.”_

John came to a stand. It was decided, which meant that he wasn’t about to look a gift-horse in the mouth, despite how uncomfortable it made him to have Jacob and Joseph in their weird little stand-off right in front of him. It was impossible, always, to tell which one was going to come out the winner, even though the end result always seemed to swing in Joseph’s favor—and that was just the way it tended to be, with them. Jacob was always the most resilient of them, but he had never been able to outlast Joseph.

“Jacob, you’ll pick the men to go,” Joseph continued amicably, and then as though to give his brother a tiny slip of victory he added, “as I trust your judgment.”

Jacob didn’t seem very pleased. “Fine,” he said again, turning and heading for the door. “But I’m _not_ taking John’s wild animal.”

“Of course.”

 _That won’t bode well,_ John thought absently, but there wasn’t a lot of time to dwell on it. He hadn’t promised Elliot Eden’s Gate would look for Joey, so already he figured this would be considered above-and-beyond. And when they inevitably found Joey—because there was no way they wouldn’t—Elliot would remember that Eden’s Gate did this for her. That _he_ did this for her.

“John,” Joseph began quietly, when Jacob had closed the door behind him and gone outside, “I’m trusting you.”

John turned his gaze to his brother. The words felt... Different. _Off._ He opened his mouth, hesitated, and then said, “What do you mean?”

Joseph was pensive as he watched the murky dusk light filter through the cross at the head of the church. “It can be easy to lose your way,” he replied, no hint of hostility or frustration in the timbre of his voice. “To get distracted. Lured off the path. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

John’s throat felt tight. “It won’t.”

“Are you positive?” Joseph finally tilted his head, casting a glance at John over his shoulder, a look that didn’t quite lock their gazes but that John felt _seen_ all the same. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he answered, “I’m—of course I’m sure. You’re my family. I’d—”

_You don’t owe him your blood and guts all the time._

“I’d do anything for you,” he finished, Elliot’s voice ringing in his head despite his better attempts to stuff down somewhere else. “You, and Jacob, and Faith.”

The older man nodded after a moment, apparently satisfied with this answer. “Then I don’t have anything to worry about.” He took in a small breath, as though to compose himself, and then turned around to face John completely, one hand gripping his shoulder with a firm squeeze. “You’ll tell me if you run into trouble?”

He regarded his brother with a beat of silence. _Then I don’t have anything to worry about,_ Joseph had said. What _had_ he been worried about? John? Or Elliot? And if it was the latter—what for? _What for?_ His that voice demanded again. _He was going to let her die. He was going to let Jacob shoot straight through her. What for?_

John said, “Of course.”

Joseph nodded again, releasing John from his grip. He departed back to the head of the chapel, flipping open the worn, white leather book, reading quietly.

A lingering uncertainty kept his feet rooted to their spot. He wanted to ask what it was he and Elliot had been talking about the day before, when she’d come sprinting around the corner with Joseph lingering behind, eyes fixed on them. But each time he opened his mouth, jealousy wound its way thick and wretched up his throat and clamped his jaw shut.

 _Do you want to know?_ it said. _Do you want to know what he was doing?_

Joseph glanced up, his gaze inquisitive. “That’ll be all, John.”

“Right,” John said, and finally his body complied, carrying him down the aisle and to the doors that led out of the church.

 _No,_ he thought. _I don’t._

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The cruelest thing, she thought, was that the world seemed to carry on just fine—as though nothing had happened, as though her body was not plagued with panic in that very moment and had been _every_ moment since realizing that Joey was missing. The sun still made its descent behind the distance mountains a leisurely one, giving the Autumn evening a brisk, energized feeling, but though it was her favorite season and the exact kind of weather she liked, there was nothing that felt _good._

Boomer had come back from when she’d let him out and searched the bunkhouse up and down for Joey. When he couldn’t find her, he paced and whined; his gaze turned to Elliot, inquisitive, and then he’d begin his search all over again, until she couldn’t take it anymore and she took him out of the bunkhouse.

She didn’t know what was worse—staring at the empty bunkhouse or watching Boomer search for Joey over and over again.

Elliot had been sitting outside of the bunkhouse—well, sitting and then standing and then pacing and then smoking _and then sitting again_ —by the time John had come out of the chapel and told her they’d be sending out a search party to check on the whereabouts of the Family—and to see if they had Joey or not.

“Just the _one?”_ Elliot asked.

“The one,” John confirmed. She sucked in a sharp breath. A headache was resting just behind her eyes, stuffed-up from the ever-present verge of tears she sat on, a feverish heat humming around idly in her skeleton.

“Fucking unbelievable,” she said at last. “I’m going to go find her myself.”

She took a few steps around John, but before she got very far she felt his hand catch at her elbow. He said, “Now, just wait a second, deputy, and listen—”

“No, _you_ listen here John Seed,” Elliot bit out, her head snapping around to look at him, meeting his gaze. “I’ll fucking die before I leave finding Joey in the hands of your little cockroaches. Especially a tiny _handful_ of them that probably won’t try very hard—”

“If we tell them to, they will—”

“—and I _especially_ ,” she ground out over his interjection, “wouldn’t trust a search party issued by Joseph Seed farther than I can throw them. So I’m going to go out and look for Joey on my own, and if you want to try and stop me, then—”

She stopped herself. _Then?_ A voice inside of her prompted, inquisitively. John stared at her, waiting for whatever blow was going to come next, tension radiating through his very posture.

“Then you’re exactly who I thought you were,” she managed out at last, pulling her arm out of his grip, “and fuck you.”

“And you’re just going to go traipsing through the woods, in the dark, unarmed, looking for her?” John snipped. “I’m sure that’ll be _super_ helpful to Hudson.”

“I’m not going unarmed,” Elliot replied briskly, “because you’re going to give me a gun.”

 _“Pardon?”_ John’s eyebrows arched up, and she didn’t want to lose her nerve but the sheer indignation in his voice almost had her second-guessing her less-than-concrete assertion. “You just about tried to sink your teeth into Jacob for something that was completely unfounded, and you want me to _arm_ you?”

“If you have to worry about me killing Jacob without a gun, then whether I have one or not doesn’t make a difference.”

“That is absolutely _not_ how that works.”

“John,” Elliot said, steeling her voice in a last-ditch effort, “you _promised.”_

He took in a sharp breath, glancing around the main yard of the compound for a moment, like maybe he didn’t want to look at her right then and there—the man who couldn’t _stop_ looking at her, trying to make her squirm. The irony of it wasn’t lost on her, but she tried to push that down for another time, another place.

“Fine,” John said at last, “but I’m coming with you, and we’re _only_ firing on the Family, _not_ on Jacob.”

A little flood of relief rushed through her system. She swallowed and nodded. “Deal,” she replied. She hesitated for a moment—her body had leaned, as though after their little moment in the bar her body now tilted to kiss him on instinct—before clearing her throat and averting her eyes. “I’ll meet you at the gate, then.”

He eyed her warily. “Okay. Ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes.”

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John was right. It _was_ unhelpful.

The turning of the season meant that the sun drifted low behind the mountains much earlier. Though Elliot knew it couldn’t have been much later than six, it was nearly dark by the time they got out into the thick of the woods; the birds had stopped their singing, and the woods had fallen asleep, leaving them painfully, dreadfully _alone_.

John had reluctantly put a shotgun in her hands on their way out and said, “Keep that trigger finger under control,” before heading out with her. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but it felt good—the weight of the gun in her hands felt _good_ , familiar and hefty and she knew the second she fired it she’d feel that slick, red-hot rush of adrenaline.

And she didn’t say that to John, because she didn’t need him trying to confiscate it.

Boomer paved the way ahead of them, darting and ducking through the underbrush with his nose to the ground. He was a smart boy; the second she’d held Joey’s water bottle up for him and said, “Find”, he’d set off with a newfound purpose, always looking for a job to do or a task to accomplish.

Her breath puffed out in a milky-white cloud. While silence reigned, the cogs of her mind churned, leaping frantically from one thing to the next. Jacob, goading her into trying to kill him; Joey, telling her she didn’t have to go it alone all the time; John, hands on her face as he kissed her like he was desperate for her. The last twenty-four hours were beginning to blur together until it became some kind of fucked-up Picasso painting, one where she couldn’t tell one moment from the next—the only thing keeping her headache and the last dredges of her pneumonia under control being the tylenol she popped the second the suggested time period had passed.

“—you doing?”

Elliot’s eyes flickered and she turned her gaze to John. “What?”

“Yesterday,” he reiterated, “when you asked me to take you to Fall’s End. What were you doing?”

She turned her gaze forward again, spotting Boomer worming his way through the brush. “What do you mean?”

“You were panicking,” John elaborated, his tone implying that there wasn’t any humor left in him. “And it looked like Joseph was—”

“I wasn’t doing _anything_ ,” Elliot interrupted. “Your brother tried his psycho bullshit on me and I exited the conversation. That’s it.”

John was quiet again, just for a moment, before he started, “Elliot—”

“I’m going to need you to shut up,” she bit out.

“Don’t you get tired of doing this?” he demanded. “What are you running from all the time, anyway?”

“You,” she snapped, “and your stupid family, always trying to dig into me—”

“Me,” John repeated flatly, “or all of your problems?”

Indignation, and _anger_ , red-hot and unruly, spiked straight to her brain. _Yes yes yes,_ her mind chanted, _fight us, push us, give us something to sink our teeth into._

But then Boomer was barking, and then he was _growling,_ the thick, hearty kind of snarl that came from deep in the cavity of his chest. Elliot shut her mouth with a determined _click_ of her teeth and set off to follow the sound of his barking.

“Elliot—” John started, but she lifted her hand to signal for silence, and he blissfully shut up. As she dug through the woods lining the compound to follow Boomer’s alerting, dread started to coil in her stomach; there were no voices to match his signaling. Nobody yelling, nobody talking to him. The idea that he’d found _something,_ but that the _something_ was incapable of speaking, made her stomach lurch and twist.

She found him just at the edge of the woods, hackles raised fully along his spine. At first, she couldn’t see what he was barking at—in the dark, she only saw the looming shape of a boulder and the ground scattered with pine-needles around it—and then she saw it.

_Blood._

The ground was damp with it, a large dark circle, and on top of it crushed lily blossoms littered the ground. The sickening smell of hot copper mixing with the sickly-sweetness of the blossoms shot nausea straight up into her throat. _Funeral flowers,_ she thought through the haze of sickness washing over her. _Restored innocence, after death._

And then, in the center of the blossoms, a head.

Not Joey’s head, she realized after a second of brutal panic shot through her. Someone else. Blonde hair, matted with blood, the skull slumping to the side like it was uneven in the back, white lily blossoms stuffed into her mouth, two perfectly preserved blooms flowering out of her eye sockets. It was Ase.

_Do you see?_

“Boomer,” she managed out unsteadily, reaching for him as she stifled the urge to gag. He darted over to her, nosing her hand with a cold, wet nose and whining softly just as John had caught up.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, lifting his arm to cover his nose, flashlight landing first on the crimson-stained ground and blossoms and then straight up to the boulder nearby. On it, scrawled in what she thought could _only_ be blood, were the words **_WRATH, DO YOU STILL WANT TO BLOOM IN ME?_ **

“What the fuck,” Elliot said, feeling her body hunch and try to puke up the bile rolling around in her stomach. “ _Who_ —”

John’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “I have an idea. But that’s—”

Elliot turned away from the gruesome sight, and at last she couldn’t hold it back anymore; the image of the decapitated head, stuffed with flowers, was burned into her memory so that even when she closed her eyes, she saw it. Her hand hit the trunk of a tree for support in keeping herself up as she vomited, the wretched sound of it only inspiring further sickness in her.

_Ase’s fingers laced with hers, eyes glassy, blood and gore spilled across her face. “Do you see?”_

“Fuck,” John said, disgust welling in his voice. “We have to get back, El.”

“He’s going to kill her,” she managed out between heaving breaths, the sour taste of bile still in her mouth. “Fuck, he’s going to kill her, John, I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have ever—”

“Let’s go.” John reached out, hand planted between her shoulder blades. “We’ll get back and tell the others. Now we know who has her.”

She nodded weakly, pulling herself up straight and swallowing back the urge to be sick again. Worse than the blood, worse than the flowers, worse than the writing—Kian, or whichever one of them had done this, had just _left_ her. Her head, left here, alone. It wrenched her heart, somewhere deep inside of her, because in her last moments of life, Ase had reached for her.

And now she was here. Left behind. Forgotten. Serving one last purpose, even after death.

Elliot couldn’t have recalled even half of the walk back to the compound if someone asked her. Not that anything happened—John didn’t push for conversation, but seemed more preoccupied with whatever was going on in his own mind, his brows furrowed and his eyes fixed ahead of them.

By the time they got back, darkness had completely fallen; a blanket of stars stretched out above them, only a little drowned out by the lights of the compound, and a more bitter chill had settled around them. Sometime on the trip back, Elliot had gripped John’s hand, afraid that if she didn’t he’d carry on without her when she would inevitably be unable to continue.

_I’m so sorry, Joey. I’m so sorry._

She stood numbly while John said something to Joseph. Though her eyes drifted aimlessly around the compound, she felt Joseph’s eyes—lingering on her, and then John, and then their hands, loosely clasped. Elliot was sure that he was delighted by this; but though his eyes kept drifting back, he said nothing about it. 

The two men spoke in low, urgent tones, and though she could have listened if she wanted, there was so little will left in her to exert the effort; it would just be a replay of the gruesome scene they’d found, anyway.

“They’re at least an hour out,” Joseph said, his voice cutting through the thrumming wobble of bass ricocheting around in her head. “They weren’t able to find them, but if they left that and it was fresh, they have to be somewhere close by. We’ll have to regroup when Jacob gets back.”

“We have to go now.” A strange kind of sensory experience washed over her as she spoke—she had become an audience member to her own body, the shotgun sitting limp and useless in her hand, the other slipping out of John’s grip. “They’re going to kill her if we don’t get her back now.”

“I’m afraid that just isn’t an option,” Joseph replied. The cloying patience in his voice made her stomach churn. “I’ve sent other members out to gather supplies, and I just can’t spare the manpower. You’d be going on your own.”

“Fine,” Elliot replied, pulling her hand out of John’s and heading toward the bunkhouse, Boomer trailing at her heels. “What’s fucking new.”

“Elliot—”

She might have tried to hear what it was Joseph and John said to each other, but she was too busy walking herself into the bunkhouse that had become her temporary base of operations. The shotgun deposited onto the bed and Boomer sitting patiently by the door, whining softly on occasion, she shuffled around in her bag before she found the carton of cigarettes. As she pulled one out, hands trembling, she tried again, and again, and _again_ to flick the lighter on, each time a more colossal failure than the last.

_I never doubted you’d be able to get me out._

Her lip wobbled against her better judgment. Discarding the cigarettes onto the bed as well after a number of failed attempts, she walked into the bathroom and rinsed her mouth, and then her face, sitting like that for a minute—bent over the sink, wet hands pressed to her face, anxiety and adrenaline battling for control over her mind.

When Elliot lifted her head, the face that stared back at her in the mirror felt like a stranger. It was _her_ , undeniably; the logical part of her brain recognized each dip and curve of her face, the blue eyes and the panic-flushed cheeks. But the part of her brain that ruled more dominant—the one driven by emotion—thought, _who is that? That’s not us. Not us, no. Too cold, too mean. Not us._

The door outside the bathroom clicked open and then shut. Boomer growled, low, but then John said something to him that she couldn’t make out and he seemed to be appeased. Funny, that he could do that now. She dried her face and hands off and stepped out of the bathroom.

“I’m going,” she said, “and I really don’t want to argue with you—”

“Then don’t,” John replied. “Don’t argue with me. You’re in no state to go and get her, El.”

“I—” Her voice faltered, and she tried to summon up the agony and the anger in her, but it was nowhere to be found. Squashed, dulled, emptied out of her. That was all she felt, now. _Empty._ “I can’t leave her. She’s—she’ll be waiting for me, I can’t.” She stepped around him when Boomer whined at the door again, opening it for the Heeler and letting him dart out.

“You won’t be any use,” he said from behind her. “Kian will crush you with one hand and her with the other.”

Elliot didn’t answer. Instead, she tossed the hand-towel off to the side and passed a hand over her face, closing her eyes.

John was right, and she didn’t want to say, so she wouldn’t say anything at all.

“Elliot.” His voice was soft, and closer now, and she saw his hand come up in her peripheral; he guided her to turn around and face him. “You know I’m right.”

Before his fingers could reach for her jaw, she caught his wrist.

“Don’t,” she said, steeling her voice, “okay? Don’t. I’ll wait until your stupid search party gets back, but—”

“Then you can be in charge,” John finished. His wrist twisted in her grip until he had her hand in his, bringing it up to the junction between his neck and shoulder where she could feel the steady rhythm of his pulse, and this close she could smell that _fucking_ cologne, and the woods, and he was so close—when had he gotten so close?—and she _knew_ what he was doing. “An hour, hour and a half tops. Kian probably wants to hold onto her and make a big show of it.” He paused, and then added, “I told you I’d help you find her, didn’t I?”

Her throat felt tight. “So _help_ me,” she managed out.

“I’m trying,” he murmured, and their noses brushed, and she thought _don’t fucking do it, don’t do it._ “You have to let me.”

Elliot felt her brows pull together, knitting in frustration and anxiety, and she said, “I can’t,” her voice breaking just a little on those two words. “I can’t, I don’t—know how—”

He gripped her, like an animal he was getting ready to spear, just before his mouth met hers; it was not a gentle kiss, this time, no tentative breaths lingering between them in uncertainty. It was a punishing kind of kiss, the sort that stung when his teeth dragged against her lower lip and her nails dug into the warm skin of his shoulder.

 _Oh,_ something in her said, when John crowded up against her, warm and firm, one hand finding her hip and the other boxing her in against the door. _Oh, is this what we needed? Is this what we wanted?_

The bite of it grounded her, dragged her back to the sting of reality, back from wherever she had been sitting and watching her life unfold like a horrific play.

“John,” she said, his name coming out of her breathless and a little wrecked, but nothing followed. She didn’t know what she was trying to say. _Please,_ her mouth wanted to say, but her mind said _we can’t, we shouldn’t, we won’t._ Scarier still was the knowledge that where she had been splitting, the part of her that had been driven through and cracked open, John had pulled her back together, even for just a little bit. Even for just a moment.

“You just have to tell me.” John’s voice was a dark, rich rumble, the sound of it shooting straight through her and pooling an unfamiliar but not unwelcome heat just at the base of her spine. Anticipation prickled along the back of her neck; his fingers at her hip slid just under the hem of her sweater, tracing the scars she knew were there. “Just tell me what you need, El, I’ll give it to you.”

“I—” She felt her gaze flicker, her breath hitching at the feeling of his fingers. He was grounding her back to reality, but he was picking her apart, too—just a different part of her, the part of her that _he_ wanted. An even exchange. She exhaled sharply, and the noise caught somewhere in her throat and came out a _whimper_ , fluid and filled with a strange, broken kind of want that flooded her with embarrassment.

But if John noticed her humiliation, it didn’t matter—he made a low, hungry noise against her mouth, his hand skimming along to her back to pull her closer to him. “Anything,” he said. “I’ll give you anything, you just have to tell me what you need and I will.”

The dark, lurid promise of it flickered through her brain. John—handsome, wicked John—dragging his mouth along her neck; John, hands deftly undoing her jeans and moaning against her skin; John, _anything you want, Elliot, just ask,_ sliding down to his knees between her legs to give her the _real_ grounding she wanted—

As though he knew exactly what she was thinking, John’s mouth drifted from hers; she felt the prickle of his beard against her neck, the tiny, tiny sting of his teeth against her pulsepoint, and she _moaned,_ the sound as involuntary as it was jarring.

John’s own noise mimicked her own. She felt his hand drop from the door to her hip, gripping—like he wanted more, _wanted her_ , but it felt like he was pacing himself. His voice, dark and low and _oh so good_ rumbled against the skin of her neck when he said, “So pretty—you sound so pretty, El—”

 _Too much,_ her alarm system was screaming, _it’s too much, too much, what do we do? Turn it off, pull the sprinklers, out out out._

But she couldn’t. Her hand slid from his shoulder down to his chest, curling into the fabric there, her body twisting traitorously to get closer to his as something wretched inside of her said, _We could just forget, for a little, wouldn’t that be nice?_ And it would—it _would_ be nice, she knew, to forget about all the gore, to forget about the panic, to let slip a few threads of control and indulge in something wicked and terrifying, like the way John said, “ _Fuck,_ I want you,” so covetously it made her chest ache.

“Can’t think,” she managed out, squirming in his grip as panic wound its way through her, mixing in a toxic cocktail with what she knew was arousal sitting in her stomach. “I can’t think, n-need air, John—”

Her hand left his shoulder and fumbled at the doorknob. John pulled back, just a little, and then stilled her shaking hand over the doorknob. His gaze was dark, the black blown wide with want, but he turned the knob on the door anyway and dropped his hand from her back as it swung open.

The cold, chilly air of the evening brutalized her senses. She took two steps away from the brunette behind her, swallowing thickly until she could actually feel her heartbeat again—fast, but tangible. Her eyes fluttered shut, but treacherously her brain went sprinting—sprinting to John pressed up against her, the gentle, dull ache where his teeth had dug into her lip, the tingle where his fingers had brushed her skin.

It was a few seconds before John said, “You should try and get some rest before they get back,” as he stepped around her. She opened her eyes to look at him; he seemed perfectly composed, as though nothing had just happened, if not for the way his eyes settled heavy on her, if not for the way that she knew he _sounded_ when he _wanted_ her.

She didn’t know what to say. Desperate for something, anything to keep her mind busy and away from the task at hand, she wanted to say, _kiss me again, please,_ but now it felt more traitorous than ever. Once in the heat of the moment was one thing, but to ask for it?

So she said, “Okay.” 

John’s eyes swept over her, slow and leisurely. “If you need me,” he continued, “come find me.”

Blood rushed to her face. _Fuck fuck fuck, so fucking bad, this is so fucking bad._ She opened her mouth to say, _I won’t,_ but before she could muster the words out of her mouth John turned and walked away, heading to the church and leaving her alone.

Alone with that strange, hungry animal inside of her.

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John could not stop thinking about her.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the way she tasted when she said his name against his mouth, or the way she squirmed and _whimpered_ the second his fingers brushed bare skin. Fuck, he wanted to know what her scars were from—wanted to run his mouth along each one until he could dip lower, drag his teeth against the soft skin and make her say his name in a _different_ way.

 _So close,_ he thought idly, the sounds she made replaying themselves in his head. _I was so close, I almost had her, she was almost mine._

It would be bad to push—he needed to exercise patience. Her friend was missing, after all. The next time he got so close, he wanted her to ask for it; he wanted her to say _please, John,_ the way that had become so easy for her to say as of late, but _more._ He wanted her to twist her fingers in his hair and beg him to put his mouth on her. And he would, if she did. He’d do anything she asked, if she just made that _noise_ again.

 _I want I want I want,_ something in him chanted, hungry, demanding. _I want her, she’s mine, all mine, nobody else’s._

An hour passed. He stepped out of the church and made his way across the yard, feeling more composed than before; he would be fine to wait, he thought. It would make it all the sweeter when she came around.

John knocked on the door to the bunkhouse and waited a few seconds before stepping inside. Elliot stirred on one of the beds, sitting up a little; her face was warm from sleep and whatever panic had been rushing through her before seemed mostly abated.

“Are they back?” she asked, kicking her legs out from under the blanket.

“Not yet,” John replied, pausing. “How are you feeling?”

Elliot eyed him with a sort of _wanting_ wariness; as though she wasn’t going to allow herself to fall victim again, even though she wanted to. It was more than she’d given him, anyway. “Fine,” she answered briskly.

“Just fine?” John prompted.

“Just fine.”

Another silence stretched between them. John said, “Elliot, I meant it when I said—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Elliot interrupted. “There’s—it’s—”

“It’s?” John waited, again, while she worked the words around in her head.

“I don’t—know,” she managed out at last. “It’s complicated.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he said idly, taking a few steps over to her. “If you don’t want it to be.”

“You said it yourself,” Elliot pointed out, “you would do anything for them. Right?”

He paused, watching her. “Yes.”

“Even,” Elliot continued, “try and—with me—”

John blinked. “Pardon?”

“Try and _fuck_ me,” the blonde bit out, “so that I’ll—so that I won’t try and put them away. So I won’t try and kill Joseph. So I’ll—”

She cut herself off, then, stopping. John thought, _She really doesn’t stop, does she? That brain of hers just won’t stop turning._ Because, perhaps, those moments that she had seen John straining for Joseph’s effort like she said—those moments that had been spent with Joseph saying things like, _I think you’re doing great with the deputy,_ or _I don’t have anything to worry about, then,_ made his fingers itch. Something in him was hurtling, careening to make Elliot his in every way. Before anyone else. 

“Elliot,” he said curtly, boxing those thoughts away to keep his composure, “please do _not_ condescend to me about the draconian machinations you think are behind the fact that I want to fuck you.”

She sucked in a sharp little breath, like she was doing her best to control her temper about what he’d just said. He saw her fingers curling absently into the sheet, and then loosening and curling again. Her lashes fluttered, and she parted her lips to say something, but nothing came out; when she turned her face away from him, he could see the beginnings of a bruise blooming where his teeth had met her skin.

John narrowed his eyes. “If you can tell me that—”

But he was interrupted by the sound of shouting outside, the rattle of a truck’s engine coming to a slow and then shutting off. Elliot’s gaze flickered from his to the door and she reached for her boots. “Is that them?”

 _Fuck,_ John thought. Deal with the matter at hand, and then finish this. Patience was a virtue, as Joseph would say. “I’ll check.”

He turned, opening the door to see Jacob pulling the truck around. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes since he had walked into the bunkhouse. Elliot would want to get out and find Joey as soon as possible, and _then_ —

Joseph was already outside, and when John stepped out into the yard, his brother said, “John—” and his voice plunged over the proverbial cliff; when their eyes met, Joseph’s feet carried him forward, an eerie and unsettling urgency to his tone. 

John hesitated in his movements as anxiety settled in the pit of his stomach. The last thing that he wanted was to see the thing that made Joseph say his name _that way_ , whatever it was—whatever monster had crawled out from under the bed.

But it was too late. Against his better judgment, and against his personal wishes, his eyes strayed innately, _searching searching searching_ for the source of duress so that he could eliminate it, until finally he found it, planted right in the middle of the compound: Joey Hudson.

Joey Hudson sat up cross-legged, her jaw broken in her skin and hung slack like a horror monster, her dark eyes glazed over and empty. From her mouth spilled the most brilliant bouquet of wildflowers John thought he had ever seen—but it was nothing, _nothing_ compared to the voluminous collection of flowers that filled up the cavernous hole of her chest. 

It was bursting with blossoms and verdant ferns. Fresh. Not a single bloom wilted. _Recent._ She was so packed-full of them that he thought, surely, they’d had to have broken her ribs out of her and tossed them to make room. The harsh lights lining the compound bathed her in a most unforgiving, cruel fluorescent glow, so that there was no mistaking any detail; each flower picked and placed with insane, meticulous care. He felt his stomach churn.

Jacob’s truck had pulled in just behind it. It was _his_ voice shouting at the men to stay, his commanding presence that tried to root John back to the earth as his brain mindlessly fizzed static around the corpse laid out in front of him, his feet carrying him forward despite his better judgement, despite the alarm bells screaming for him to go back. All thoughts of his conversation with Elliot were wiped clean from his brain, bashed in and crumbled to dust under the sight before him.

“What’s wrong?”

Elliot’s voice jarred him out of the strangely-dulcet reverie the gruesome, discordant corpse had put him into, like a spell suddenly broken. He thought, very quickly, _Elliot is going to be devastated,_ and then, _I have to stop her, she can’t see this._

When John turned to look at her, his hands instinctively went up, in a foolish act of trying to block it from her view. It was no use; her eyes fixed on it immediately, having come out before he could notice, in plain view of Hudson’s decorated body.

“No no no no—”

Her voice wobbled and filled with dread. John reached for her. He thought, _if I can hold her;_ he thought, _if she would just let me hold her;_ but Elliot had never before, and he didn’t know why he had thought she would now. She shoved his arms away from her, the anguished noise that came out of her ripping right through his sternum.

The blonde took one, two, three steps before she stumbled, and John’s arms went for her, circling around her waist to keep her from the ground and keep her from Joey, and she _howled,_ grief and rage welling out of her in a sound that John wished he had never, ever had to hear.

“Stop looking, El,” he said helplessly, the feeling of her body crumpling over the circle of his arms nearly pulling him down with her; her feet found purchase on the ground, and she pulled at his grip, sobbing an incoherent train of _no’s_ over and over until she was wrenching her whole body like a wild animal to get loose. Doing the only thing that she knew how to do, anymore: hit, and hurt, and try to get free.

She moaned, viciously, “Don’t _fucking touch me_ ,” and he grabbed her wrists to still her, to stop her from hitting him. Over and over, she said, “This is your fucking fault—this is your fault, I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll kill you, John Seed—”

“Elliot,” John said over her howling, “I have you.”

Elliot cried, and cried and cried, until all she had the energy left to do was cry, rattling deep in the cavity of her chest where the rest of the sickness still lingered; she cried and John gripped her wrists and pulled her forward until her face was against his chest and he said, “I have you, I have you,” again, because that was all he could say to her; there was nothing else that he could give her.

Her fingers curled and uncurled weakly into fists. He was only vaguely aware, over the sounds of her grief and misery, of Joseph telling Jacob to get help to move the body; he registered the voices somewhere in the back of his mind, but all he could really think about was the way Elliot slumped against him, digging her nails into her palms over and over again as she cried until he slid his hands to hers to keep her fingers laid flat.

John pushed the hair from her face. Her cheeks were flushed red from her grief, her bottom lashes—normally so blonde and fine—a dark, mousy color from the tears. His hands took her face and he said, “Look at me,” and he pressed their foreheads together. “Just you and me. Don’t—look over there, stay here, with me.”

“I can’t.” Her voice broke. She sobbed; the sound of it rattled somewhere deep inside John’s skull, locked itself in his jaw, to haunt him, forever. “I can’t, I _can’t_ —I hate you—”

He said, helplessly again, “I know, El.”

Her breaths rattled, laborious and exhausted, from somewhere deep inside of her where Grief had made its permanent home. She lifted her head and sucked in another breath, a sharper one, but as soon as she saw Jacob moving towards Hudson’s body, she lurched forward.

“ _Don’t.”_ The words came out of her like something wretched, something vicious. Jacob, blissfully, stopped; the lines of his expression were hard, and unforgiving, but he seemed to be waiting rather than doing it out of spite. For once. “Don’t you fucking touch her, don’t—”

“We have to move her body,” John said; just like that, the words crushed her, brutalized her under agony’s weight. The words _her body_ seemed to have cut her right to the quick, and if he hadn’t been holding her, he thought she might have collapsed on the ground.

“My Joey,” she moaned. _Agonized,_ an animal trapped and wailing to be let go _._ “What did they _do_ to her? What did they do to you? John—”

A near-midnight breeze carried the voices of the Eden’s Gate members just ahead, and Joey Hudson’s corpse stirred, petals fluttering and dark hair drifting in the breeze. For a second in time, she had been resurrected—just one second—where the horror of her murder melded into something more monstrous than before.

And Elliot, saying his name in a way that said _help me._ All of her vitriol, and all of her poison, and all of the times she’d said _I’ll rip your fucking eyes out_ or _I’ll kill you,_ and _now_ she was here—gripping him, holding him tight, like he was the last thing in the entire world that was going to keep her anchored to the earth. Each dreadful noise of heartache that came out of her tolled like a bell inside of him, vibrating its discordant song over and over again.

_I need you, help me._

John wrapped her up in his arms more securely. “Let Jacob move her somewhere quiet, Elliot.”

The sorrow hiccuped in her chest. She tried to say something, but the words came out broken, merely fragments of the sentence she’d been wanting, and she stopped her squirming; when John was able to turn her away from the gruesome sight, Jacob began moving again, speaking in a low, urgent tone to another member of Eden’s Gate.

It felt like he was in a dream as he walked her into the church. The time between Hudson’s corpse and the doors seemed both to stretch on forever and pass in a blink; once inside the dark, quiet chapel, the door closed behind them, John found himself releasing a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

He guided Elliot to a nearby pew, sitting her down; as he settled between her knees, palms flat on the tops of her thighs, Elliot sucked in a deep, shuddering breath.

“John,” she said, and he waited for her to finish her sentence but she didn’t; each time she opened her mouth, all that came out of it was a wet, agonized sob, the kind that dragged the grit right out of her chest, shuddering and hoarse. She tried again: “ _John_ ,” and he took her hands and held them in his.

“I know,” he said. And then that nasty, wicked little monster inside of him; _finally, finally, finally,_ it chanted, Elliot crumpling at the waist to bury her face, wet with tears, against their clasped hands. _Finally finally finally. Mine, all mine, mine and nobody else’s._

It should have made him feel guilty. He should have felt bad about it. John knew it; he knew what kinds of emotions were expected out of people in times like this, what people looked for, but he didn’t. He didn’t feel guilty at all.

“El,” he murmured against her hair, “you have to breathe.”

“I can’t,” she sobbed, “I can’t.”

 _Poor, desolate little hellcat,_ he thought, knelt between her legs as she cried. _Poor, agonized hellcat._

“You can,” John said. “For me.”

She did. One long, arduous breath in, and then another, and another, until her breathing was normal and she was emptied out. Only the hollow grief remained; her gaze lackluster, empty, searching idly for somewhere safe and soft to land.

“I have to find him,” she whispered, her voice rasping raw in her throat.

“We will.” He watched her, and though her eyes never landed on him, her hand still clutched his, nails digging into his skin like she thought she was going to float away. Like she was afraid he’d leave. She finally looked at him.

“Swear,” Elliot said. “Swear we’ll find him, and kill him—rip him apart—”

Just like that, the grief was reformed; he saw it happen, the way she gripped it, mangled it in her hands, even when it bloodied her with its edges. Twisted it into something useful. Anything to fit it, slot it right into her like one more missing piece in her puzzle. There was no room for sadness in there: only anger. Only wrath.

_What do we do with grief?_

“I swear,” John insisted. She was _so_ full of it; vengeance, burning straight through her, so easily flipped on. And all his. 

“I _mean_ it, John.”

“I told you,” he said. “Anything you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter name comes from the song, "That Unwanted Animal", by The Amazing Devil, which is an incredible song and if you listen you'll know what's up.
> 
> The writing on the rock comes from a Swedish poem, "Deadly Sins, Do You Still Want Me?" by Eva Ström.
> 
> Clock me on tumblr @proudspires talking about these idiots, general shenanigans, etc etc. I'd love to have a chat!


	14. american venom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When one is alone and lonely, the body  
> gladly lingers in the wind or rain,  
> or splashes into the cold river, or  
> pushes through the ice-crusted snow.
> 
> Anything that touches."  
> — Mary Oliver, Leaves And Blossoms Along The Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks, we did it. The fic is done.
> 
> JK. I wrote another 11k chapter that has almost no actual plot movement and only character interaction and idk what to tell you; Elliot be schemin, or do she? The world may never know. 
> 
> (I mean u will, eventually, just--not right now.)
> 
> UH. Thanks so much to @baeogorath and @lilwritingraven for cheering me on through this monster, and naturally @starcrier for being the perfect angel she is, always gassing me up and making me feel good about myself when I spent most of the day in a slump about this chapter!!!! And tysm for the people who commented, joined me on tumblr for shenanigans and commented/reblogged/liked on there; sometimes it really does like inspire me to write to hear that someone out there is enjoying this, even a little bit. I mean it!!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: explicit sex. Yes, friends. We are there. And the events surrounding it are stressful and no one's real motivations are super clear so take that as you will. John's a psycho and so are the rest of his brothers. Elliot is spiraling rapidly out of control. There's some more allusions/minor tiny dialogue flashbacks to her trauma. A quiet, sad funeral happens. Elliot's mom isn't the best (but I think we knew that). I think that's really all there is but please let me know if I forgot anything!!
> 
> Please enjoy! Please let me know if you enjoy! I'm on tumblr @proudspires and would love to hear from you. <3

Everyone always knew that Elliot Honeysett was a _good_ girl.

She was Hope County’s little blossom; those soft little baby-blue doe eyes were an unstoppable force of nature. The Honeysett name was not one that carried with it a lot of weight until Elliot came around, until Scarlet paraded her little golden-haired toddler around. And then that toddler became a young woman, incredibly bright and with a razor-sharp wit, even after her daddy skipped town.

“Ambrose wasn’t ever really the settling type,” her mother would say to her friends as she made herself a gin and tonic at ten in the morning. “We always knew that. Didn’t we, bunny?”

And then she’d look at Elliot, who always stuck around the front room while her mother mixed a drink or smoked a cigarette because it made it feel like they were close. _We,_ Scarlet would say, like her daughter was in on it. Like Elliot had always known her daddy wasn’t going to stick around and that made her complicit in his disappearance—and thus, destroyed any right she would have to be sad about it.

So she isn't. Sad, that is.

It became their special thing—a thing that only they could understand, the two of them. They were Honeysett women, and they had always known that Ambrose wasn’t the settling type, and that meant that nobody else in the entire world would understand what it was they had been through.

 _Such a good girl,_ the townsfolk said, when Elliot’s graduation announcement came that she was going into the city to train in law enforcement. _We know her, she’s a good girl._

But no one said that when Elliot came _back._ Nobody looked at her skittish eyes, or her body tensing when someone would raise their voice around her, or the way she’d swallow back and bite down a flinch like her life depended on it when she’d catch sight of a hand flying out of the corner of her eyes. It was too easy to just let that slip away. She’d passed the psych eval, and Hope County was desperately understaffed—and maybe Whitehorse felt a bit of pity for her, too, even if he mostly felt regret about putting a gun in her hands.

So, no. Nobody said that they knew she was good, and nobody asked what had happened to make her _bad_ , either, and maybe she was better off for it.

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John left Elliot in the chapel with Faith—his sister had fluttered her hands over Elliot in the way that she did, her sweet voice an exhale when she said, “Oh, _deputy_ ,” like she shared in her grief. If Faith’s presence around her made her feel _anything_ , it didn’t show on her face; her eyes lingered, exhausted, and she inhaled and exhaled like a person, but not even Faith’s fingers brushing the hair from her face as she sat curled up on the pew elicited a response in her.

“What are they doing with her?” Elliot had asked, her voice hoarse; the sound of her agony was still echoing in his head, and he was sure she’d be in physical discomfort for at least a day to come. “What are they—with her—” And then her breath hiccuped again, the sharp, jutting way she took in a breath making way for more tears, but they didn’t come; just the soft sound of agony that slipped out of her mouth as she tried to work around the words she was trying to say.

 _My Joey,_ she’d howled, tearing at him, _what did they do to you?_

“Nothing without your permission,” John had replied. Not because he thought it was true, but because he knew it was what Elliot wanted to hear.

But now, as he stood just before the double doors of the chapel, he glanced back at Elliot and Faith clustered together on the pew. The soft, quiet sounds of Elliot’s labored breathing were interrupted only by Faith’s soft, “So lost, aren’t you? Poor, sweet thing,” and for once Elliot had no retort. She didn’t jerk away from his sister’s touch; only closed her eyes tiredly, face flushed and tear-streaked.

John stepped outside, closing the door behind him and blinking in the harsh fluorescents. A sense of unease had settled in the pit of his stomach. It wound all the way up his spine, gripping and grappling its way until it knotted just at the base of his skull. As he crossed the yard, he saw that they hadn’t yet moved Hudson’s body; Joseph faced away from it, but Jacob continued to look at it, his face set in a deep frown.

“Can’t you get this out of here?” John asked as he came closer, his mouth twisting in disgust. God, it was somehow _worse_ without the shock and awe of its first appearance; there had to be a hundred flowers stuffed in her, spilling out of her mouth, blooming in her chest. The same flower bloom was only repeated once or twice.

“Just trying to figure out how the fuck they got it here,” Jacob replied.

“It had to have been just before you came back,” John said. “I was here, heading to the bunkhouse, not… I don’t know, twenty minutes before we heard you.”

“Sneaky fucks.”

“I’m _more_ concerned about how they got her,” John continued. “I mean—I saw her just this afternoon, after Elliot and I got back from Fall’s End.”

Jacob nodded absently. “Me too. Saw her heading out, asked her what she thought she was doing—”

“Charming.”

“—said she needed some air, and was going on a walk.’

 _Ah,_ John thought, and therein laid the greatest problem: women like Hudson and Elliot, needing air all the time. Not being able to stick around them for very long before they were itching to be somewhere else. Kian was probably furious about Ase; he’d left her head as a message, and then he’d left Joey as a message, too.

Still, all that rage, to result in this? Hudson’s body seemed to be handled with the utmost care. There was no bruising anywhere on her skin, which had lost its lifelike luster but was nowhere close to decomposing. She had died recently, and they had treated her with the same kind of ritualistic reverence they had treated the other bodies.

The others, except for Ase, whose decapitated head remained in the woods. _Wrath, do you still want to bloom in me?_

“Well, this solves one of our problems,” Joseph said, his voice ringing pensive as he regarded the church and not Hudson’s corpse. “Don’t you think, Jacob?”

The eldest brother was silent for a moment. He came to a stand, crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“And the other?” Joseph prompted.

“Well, Deputy Honeysett can’t be of any use to us if she’s all fucked in the head,” Jacob mused. “Which—not to sound like I _told_ you so, but had _I_ been allowed to break her in, then—”

“She’s fine,” John snapped. The absurdity of bickering over Hudson’s flowering corpse did not go missed by him, but the irritation spike in him was too loud, too heavy, to notice. “You really can’t get over that, can you?”

The red-head's gaze slid to him. A crooked smile ticked the corner of his mouth upward. “Does it bother you when I say that, little brother?” Jacob asked, feigning a kind of oil-slick-innocence that John knew was _meant_ to rattle him. “Don’t like the idea of sharing your toys?”

 _No,_ he thought spitefully, but he said, “What I don’t like is hearing you whine and cry all the time that you didn’t get your turn.”

“Grief,” Joseph interrupted mildly, “is the _purest_ motivator, Jacob. Even more so than love, and even more so than fear. I have no doubt that John will do right by his family and not let this opportunity slip him by.”

“Naturally,” John agreed with ease, stifling and stamping out the discord that seemed to break into a riot the second Joseph spoke about the “opportunity” slipping him by. “And my first act as opportunity-taker is to deem that Hudson’s body gets wrapped up and put somewhere we don’t have to keep looking at it.”

The red-head flashed a toothy, wolfish grin in full force now. He almost seemed _pleased_ , if John was correct in reading his eldest brother. “Cold,” he drawled. “Not even going to let your little attack dog come out here and grieve? I hear that’s an important, _necessary_ part of the process.”

John waved his hand, gesturing toward Hudson’s body without quite making eye contact with it. The last thing he wanted to do was have to look at her any longer. _Sorry about it, Hudson,_ he thought idly.

“Elliot doesn’t know what she needs to grieve properly,” he said, making his way back to the chapel. “Lucky thing, she has me to tell her.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Something had to be done.

She had spent too much of her time here, clustered on the floor between the pews, while Faith hummed softly under her breath and carded her fingers through the loose strands of Elliot’s hair. Her ponytail was almost moot at this point—it barely held her hair back from her face, large chunks of it curtaining each side of her vision, but she couldn’t bring herself to fix it.

There was no more room for inaction. Burke was gone, John had said; Burke was gone, somewhere, maybe dead or maybe he got out and fucked off and never looked back, or maybe he was coming back with reinforcements, and she didn’t know where Whitehorse was, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered at all.

“My mother used to do this for me when I was little,” Faith murmured, dragging Elliot out of the strange, hypnotic mantra which had become a comfort to her in this time. “Said I used to be a fussy child, you know. Restless and troubled from the start.”

She blinked tiredly, stifling the absurd laugh that wanted to come out of her; had anyone told her a week ago that she would be letting Faith Seed comfort her, on the floors of Joseph’s very own chapel, she would have thought they were insane. Certifiable. But _now_ —

“My mama said the same thing,” she murmured, face nestled in her arms, rested on the seat of the pew. “She just put whiskey in my cup.”

Faith laughed. The sound was soft and delicious—the kind of sound Elliot could have lost herself in, if her mind wasn’t turning over and over and over again. The girl seemed to be doing well for someone who was supposed to be going through withdrawals, Elliot thought; but then she realized that Faith was probably stifling the blow of her withdrawals with the drug of her choice.

She tilted her head to look at Faith, who watched her evenly. But her eyes had a pleasant glossiness to them. _Blissed out._ She wondered what that was like, to lose herself in something for a little while. Her own mother had indulged frequently enough, and now that Elliot was there—now that she had lost something so viciously that she wanted to be lost, too—she thought about how much her mama had been hurting every single day, to drink the way that she did.

“Poor deputy,” Faith murmured sweetly. “Alone in all the world.”

 _Am I?_ Elliot thought, but she supposed it didn’t matter. She _was_ all alone. And she wasn’t going to get anything that she wanted if she didn’t have anyone on her side.

She thought about Joey, flowers blooming out of her eyes, blooming out of her mouth, ripping through her sternum and ribcage. Gutted, hollowed out, empty. She thought about Ase’s head, left in the woods, alone. Alone in all the world. Weren’t they just a bunch of lonely girls, the three of them?

Elliot felt her molars grinding. Nausea welled up inside of her again, violent and unforgiving. She’d been letting John kiss her while—while _Joey_ was _really_ alone, while she was—

_Dead. Dead, dead, dead._

“-’scuse me,” she managed out, struggling to her feet and searching for a door. She made a beeline for the farthest one away from the compound’s center, stepping out and into the chilly night air behind the church; _dead dead dead_ , that nasty thing inside of her chanted. _She’s fucking dead, all our fault, don’t you know? All our fault._

Her hands hit her knees just before she threw up—or tried to, anyway. There was nothing left inside of her that was ready to come out, so it was just miserable dry-heaving, lurching through her body like agony, until she was _crying,_ trying desperately to throw the wicked voices out of her head.

Boomer whined softly, having crept out the brush, nudging her hand with a cold, wet press of his nose. Elliot felt the dry, rattling sob hiccup in her chest. She buried her fingers into his fur and sat there on the ground, pressing her face against his scruff.

“I’m sorry,” she moaned miserably, “I’m sorry, buddy, I—I didn’t keep her safe, I told her I’d come and get her and I didn’t—”

The Heeler panted hot doggy breath onto her ear, letting her stay there—a little wretched, a little wrecked—and sitting patiently all the while. Finally, her breathing slowed down. Her body stopped trying to get her to lean over and puke again. Whatever tears had been left in her were wrung out until she was nothing but mangled dishtowel.

She would kill Kian. She’d claw his eyes out, and dig her teeth into him, and make him suffer for what he’d done. She’d find him and bash his fucking skull in until he was gone past recognition.

Elliot stayed there for a little while like that: replaying the gruesome ways that she would make Kian pay in her head while Boomer curled up between her knees, whining softly but staying as close as he could squirm, her fingers tracing absently over the patterned spots of his fur.

And _then_ her mind—traitorous, wicked thing—drifted to John. John Seed, wicked and tempting, mouth on hers. _Yes, alright,_ something in her sighed, _let’s think about this for a while instead._

He’d said he’d give her anything if she asked for it. She’d never had a man say that kind of thing to her before, and certainly not a man like John Seed.

_Fuck, I want you._

Joey was dead, and something had to be done.

“I’m not gonna fuck up again,” Elliot whispered into the top of Boomer’s head, swallowing thickly. It felt good to make a call. She couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t had to fight for autonomy in her decisions; so she just wouldn’t, anymore.

It wasn’t about getting out, anymore. It was about getting even. 

And it felt good.

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

She couldn’t have said how much time passed between when she had planted herself outside of the church and when she finally managed to get to her feet. It probably wasn’t long; by the time she was walking back into the chapel and over to the door that led out into the yard, Boomer trailing at her heels, it was John that she met at the doorway. They were probably “switching shifts”, he and Faith.

“I was just coming to get you,” he said, his eyes sweeping over her face for a moment, taking in her expression. Before, when he’d been holding her, when he’d said, _You can, for me,_ he’d sounded—

_Pleased._

“You got me,” Elliot replied, slipping past him. She was so tired. So tired, and John’s cologne was giving her a headache, and if she thought for one more second about what it was like to kiss him she was going to come unglued.

_“You’re my girl, Elliot. That means you belong to me.”_

She stopped moving. A blistering anxiety went sprinting through her. A dull, brutal pain pounded behind her eyes. Elliot reached up and passed a hand over her face, trying to focus on the things around her—on Jacob and Joseph, talking urgently between themselves at the truck, at the fluorescents lining the compound’s yard.

_“Do you know what I get to do with things that belong to me?”_

The lights were splintering through her vision, drifting in and out of focus. Every inch of her body _ached_ , tensed and ready for flight, and _fuck_ she just wanted—she just wanted to relax, but there was no button in her brain that flipped the memory switch off and the un-tense button on.

_“Anything I fucking want.”_

Out of the corner of her eye, around the lights blending and shifting in front of her eyes, she saw before she felt a hand reaching for her shoulder. It was pure instinct, the alarm bells shrieking in her head. _Danger! Danger!_ They screamed, demanding her to move, and she did—she turned as quickly as she could and snatched the offending wrist, digging her nails in as hard as she could.

“Easy!” John exclaimed. “It’s just me.”

Of course it was John. It wouldn’t have been anyone else, a part of Elliot reasoned—but it didn’t matter; her brain was still flooded with adrenaline, ready to rip and tear and snap. She felt her eyes flicker uneasily, and thought about loosening her grip.

“Don’t,” she bit out, “sneak up on me like that. I’ll break your fucking arm.”

Boomer barked and growled, ears flattening back on his head as he bared his teeth. He’d been tolerating John because Elliot’s body language had changed around him—but this was _familiar_ body language she had now, tense and taut and unforgiving.

“Sit,” Elliot said to the Heeler, and he did; she turned her eyes back to John. “Addendum: I’ll break your fucking arm and then let Boomer rip your face off.”

“Noted,” he replied, as casual as he could be while she held his wrist in a vice-grip. He spoke the same way that she imagined he would have to a startled animal— _probably_ , a nasty voice in her reasoned, _the same way he would talk to a startled animal right before he kills it._ John’s eyebrows lifted, like he was about to say something that he knew she wasn’t going to particularly like. “Just didn’t want you to go over there before they started loading her in the truck. Can I have my arm back?”

“Where are they taking her?” Elliot demanded. She kept her fingers around his wrist.

“ _You and I_ are taking her wherever you want her to be buried,” John clarified, and even though she knew that it must hurt, to have her digging into him, he muscled through the pain spectacularly; as though she weren’t affecting him at all. Boomer growled again, low and deep, and she finally dropped his arm to reach down and pat the dog’s head.

She knew, already, where she wanted to take Joey to bury her. That John had arranged this for her without her asking meant that he wanted something, but she was too tired to try and think around _that_ particular puzzle.

So she didn’t. She said, “Let’s fucking go, then,” and started heading toward the truck, Boomer racing ahead of her and then pacing back when he got within a few feet of the two other Seeds. Jacob and Joseph’s eyes were on her; they’d been watching that little moment, she was sure, but it was just one of the many things she didn’t want to expend anymore energy on.

“Deputy,” Joseph greeted her. “I’m so very sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t talk to me,” Elliot said. “Give me the keys.”

“Hey,” Jacob barked out, bristling. “We don’t _have_ to give you her body, little girl.”

 _This_ spiked something in her; it was like she’d been underwater this whole time, and now Jacob had yanked her out of it. It was _burning_ —anger, flooding her system, and a little something like relief too; relief at the familiar emotion, the comfortable feeling of being enraged. It reminded her that she wasn’t certain that Jacob didn’t have something to do with Joey’s death.

“If you think,” Elliot ground out, “for one _fucking second_ that I won’t rip your fucking eyes out, I’d be happy to re-educate you.”

“We’re not doing this _again,”_ John said from somewhere behind her; she could almost _feel_ the way he wanted to grab her shoulder, and only minutes after she’d lectured him not to. He didn’t—blissfully—but he _did_ take the keys from Joseph. “Deputy, let’s not—”

“I could snap your neck with one hand if I wanted,” Jacob snapped back venomously.

She cocked her head to the side, considering for a moment. Something inside of her lit up delightedly at the threat; she looked at Joseph for a moment, meeting his unreadable gaze before looking back at Jacob and lifting an eyebrow. “Do you?”

“Do I _what?”_ the redhead replied.

“Want to kill me.”

He laughed, sharp and uneven. “More than anything.”

 _“Stop,”_ John bit out. But Elliot looked at Boomer, giving a silent gesture that had him sitting, before she turned gaze back to Jacob. 

“Do it, then,” Elliot said, chin lifted defiantly.

John’s incredulity radiated like a heatwave. “Fucking _what?”_

“Kill me,” she bit out venomously. “If you want to so fucking bad. What’s stopping you?”

Jacob’s mouth twisted viciously; his hands clenched at his sides, and she thought, for sure, that he was considering it. But then Joseph said, very quietly, “Jacob,” and a surge of victory flared in her chest. She could see the flex of his jaw, his molars grinding against each other as he certainly considered the logistics of disobeying Joseph’s muted, single-word order.

_Gotcha._

“Well,” she said, taking the keys out of John’s hands, “this has been _real_ fun, boys, but I’ve got a fucking body to bury, if you don’t mind.”

Joseph inclined his head just a little, a tiny, tiny smile on his face. He seemed to be considering something for a moment—perhaps, the entertainment value of letting her and Jacob go at it—before he said, “Of course, Deputy Honeysett. We can’t imagine how difficult this must be for you. That’s why we want to make this as easy as possible. Isn’t that right, John?”

“Exactly. So, Elliot will _stop_ picking fights with Jacob,” John snipped, _“right?”_

She regarded the red-headed Seed with a half-lidded gaze as she replied, “Anything you say, John.”

“Good.” He let out a sharp exhale of breath and then paced around the front of the truck; Joseph walked off a few steps to a few of the members of Eden’s Gate who had been standing around watching. They fluttered around him like moths to a flame, ever-adoring and ever-present.

 _Fucker,_ Elliot thought poisonously. But it was _jealousy_ , too. Imagining having people who would look at her like that made her stomach twist.

She stepped toward the driver’s side of the truck, unlocking it and pulling it open. Before she could try and get in, Jacob’s hand slammed down on the pane and shoved the door shut, and he leaned down to look at her.

“You think that little temper tantrum is going to work on me?” he asked her, voice low and rumbling a threat straight down her spine. It had been a long time, she reasoned, since she’d hit someone, or shot someone; she’d have loved the opportunity to indulge that part of her with Jacob. Her _Wrath,_ as John would have said. “Joseph’s going to get tired of keeping you around, Deputy, and pretty soon John will too. And then what will you have?” He cocked his head to the side. _“Nothing.”_

Boomer barked once—sharp and authoritative, one single warning as he waited for Elliot to signal him otherwise.

“Take your hand off the door,” Elliot said, forcing the words between her teeth. Jacob watched her for one heartbeat longer and then did, stepping back as she beckoned Boomer into the cab of the truck and then climbed in herself, shutting the door firmly and slamming her hand down on the lock before she started the truck.

John was watching her with those eyes—his _prying_ eyes, the eyes that wanted to figure out exactly what she was thinking, but she forced her eyes forward.

Jacob grinned at her wolfishly, knocking on the window to get her attention. “Drive safe, Deputy.”

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It felt worse to go to Fall’s End this time around.

The first time, John had considered it a pilgrimage of sorts—a time to spend with Elliot alone, pick her brain and push her boundaries once she had been relaxed and confirmed of Joey’s safety with her. This trip was different; Elliot drove, and she drove in stony silence, and the clock on the dash blinked **_4:37 AM_ ** aggressively at them to signal that it might not actually be that time because the clock hadn’t been set in a long time.

Every time he stole a glance over at her, she looked like she hadn’t changed. The drawn, taut lines of her face, the tension in her jaw, the color fleeing her knuckles as she gripped the steering wheel. Elliot was a far cry from the girl he’d leaned into at a bar and said, _A lot can be accomplished in just two weeks, beautiful,_ and watched the blush bloom under her cheeks like the most immaculate blossom.

No, _now_ Elliot was a creature of violence—of Wrath. And he thought that maybe he liked her more this way. Bloodied, and howling and shrieking and grappling her way through everything.

By the time they had gotten to the outskirts of Fall’s End, Elliot brought the car to a stop and then pulled off of the main road and began driving out into the nearby field.

“Where are you—”

“Stop. Talking.” Elliot didn’t spit the words with her usual venom, but they rang oddly hollow—no room for compromise. He thought about reminding her that this was a _favor_ that he had done her, that Jacob had been right when he said that they didn’t _have_ to give Hudson’s body to her, but the strange shift in her made him stop.

_Kill me, if you want to do it so fucking bad._

John shut his mouth tightly and waited until Elliot stopped a few feet away from a lone tree in the field. It was still dark out; Autumn had arrived in full force, and as he climbed out of the truck he felt the uneasy bite of the morning chill. Hudson had been wrapped in several layers of white sheet, but there were spots where the blood from her ceremonial gutting had seeped through.

John watched Boomer leap out of the truck and go trotting over to the tree. From there it was silence: Elliot and John hoisted Hudson out of the back of the truck and laid her down, and then Elliot grabbed the shovel and paused.

“You can sit in the truck,” she managed out, and there was a strange, unsteady wobble in her voice. “I should—do this by myself.”

 _You can_ , she said. Not an order. A suggestion. She was flickering somewhere foreign to him, between feral and grieving; perhaps they were not so far apart for his hellcat.

He did as she suggested. She would remember that he did, and he was counting on that.

She dug. And dug, and dug, and dug, until there was light beginning to break over the distant mountains. And then she pulled Hudson’s wrapped body into the hole and knelt next to it for a little while; sometimes her face was buried into her hands, and sometimes she was staring at the body in the hole, and sometimes John could hear her say things. Things like, _I’m so fucking sorry, Jo,_ and _I don’t know what to do without you, anymore, what do I do without you,_ and _It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it should’ve been fucking me and it wasn’t and it’s not fucking fair._

And then, after the grief: _I’ll kill him, Joey, I’ll fucking kill him, I swear to God, I promise. If I have to die for it I will._

Then, she filled the hole.

She filled the hole, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and threw the shovel to the side and walked back to the truck with Boomer following after her, ever obedient, ever watchful.

“All done?” John asked, when she came up to the window on the passenger side. She leaned her hand up against the truck and sucked her teeth, nodding her head after a moment—but he saw it on her face. The way her mouth twisted into a downturn to try and stop the trembling.

“You can drive,” she replied, handing him the keys. “Scoot.”

He did, and she climbed in next to him, closing the door once Boomer had hopped up and then settled into the back. After a second, he began, “Elliot, for what it’s worth—”

“It’s not,” she interrupted, steeling her voice. “Worth anything. To me.”

So he drove. He pulled away from the gravesite and back onto the road and started on the drive back to the compound with dawn’s gray fingers creeping across the sky. Elliot stayed awake for most of the ride, drifting off only occasionally, but all of that softness—all of that _need_ she’d had of him, when she’d seen Hudson, was gone. Dissipated. Buried away somewhere deep.

Until they parked at the compound. It was quiet, the lights buzzing overhead, and when he went to get out of the truck he felt her hand catch his.

“John,” Elliot said. She stopped, swallowing thickly when he looked back at her. “You—You said that—you _swore_ we would.”

She ended the sentence there. _You swore we would._ Find Kian. Kill Kian. John considered that he might have done it, if Elliot asked him to and even if Kian wasn’t the biggest fucking thorn in his side—he thought that he might, even then, but that wasn’t what was being tested. 

Kian _was_ the biggest fucking thorn in his side, now, the only thing standing between Eden’s Gate and actual freedom, and taking him out also meant bringing Elliot with them.

She had no one waiting for her, now.

“I meant it,” John replied. And he had; she just didn’t need to know all of the moving pieces that went into it.

Elliot nodded, and her lashes fluttered for a second before she leaned in. He almost didn’t know what she was doing for a moment, it was such a foreign gesture: but her lips brushed his, tentative at first, and she hesitated. Her hand was gripping his so hard that he thought she might leave a bruise.

“Please,” she said, in the dark, quiet of the cab, where it was just them—no Joseph, no Jacob, no Eden’s Gate or the Family bearing down on them. “Don’t—make me regret—”

 _Oh, sweet girl,_ John thought, the shrieking delight racing through him at this surge of tenderness. Hudson had really done a number on her, it seemed—he wished he could have anticipated this, but she’d given him so little these last few hours that it would have been impossible. No, this was completely unaccounted for, but for that single suspended moment in time it felt like _all_ of his suffering was finally paying off.

“You won’t,” he murmured against her mouth, stifling his smile as he reached up with the hand that wasn’t in hers to cradle her face. “I promise.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

It was early afternoon when he saw her next. The compound was mostly quiet; in anticipation of the oncoming storm, Joseph had directed several of their followers back to the bunker, and had made it very clear that though the sacrifice of him remaining above ground was a great one, he would make it to ensure that there were no further interruptions. Of course, John knew that his brother would only retreat once he knew that this last problem was wrapped up; that had always been Joseph’s intention, Joseph’s _way_ , and this one would be no different.

“Elliot,” John said, surprised to see her up and moving so early as she intercepted his own path to the chapel. It had been less than twenty-four-hours since the discovery of Joey Hudson’s corpse, and yet here she was—he’d anticipated at least another four hours of grief-sleep, though if the dark circles beginning to form under her eyes were any indication, she’d gotten hardly any at all.

He was still trying to figure out if Joey’s death had pulled her in or pushed her away. It wasn’t entirely clear; he couldn’t get the same read on her that he had before, like something was sitting just between them, but he tried not to think too hard about it. Whatever it was, he was certain that she would eventually come to be grateful for the things that he had done for her, and then she would see the error of her ways, confess her sins, and—

“John,” she replied. Absently, she pulled at the sleeve of her sweater. “Where’s your brother?”

He regarded her curiously. “How much sleep did you get? You should be resting.”

“I didn’t ask what you thought I should be doing,” Elliot snapped. John waited— _I’m not going to answer you if you’re going to act like a child,_ he thought petulantly, _especially not after how sweet you were earlier,_ —and then she elaborated, carefully enunciating the words as though moderating her temper at the same time, “I want to confess.”

Something like a thrill raced through him, almost immediately. _Oh, yes,_ he thought, delightedly, _anything for you, Elliot. I’ll let you confess for hours if you want._ He would bet she was sweet—if he had to put money on it, he’d bet that Elliot was a crier, a clinger, the kind who buried her face into your neck and said, _Please, I want to be forgiven._

Managing to stifle down the grin that wanted to split across his face, he said (and perhaps failed at keeping his delight muted), “You only had to say. We can find somewhere quiet and I’d be more than happy to—”

“Not to you,” Elliot interrupted flatly. “Joseph.” 

John felt his stomach twist at the words. She had never, ever wanted to see Joseph before—had never asked for it, hadn’t even ever demanded it of him. Avoided him like the plague. In fact, John was nearly certain that Joseph had inspired in Elliot a panic attack of monumental proportions. Any discussion of his brother between the two of them had been tight-lipped and to the point; efficient, quick-and-done, the end.

 _I’ll kill your brother first, so that you can bury him yourself,_ she’d said, that morning after her capture. But _now?_

“He’s busy,” John said instinctively, as though that kind of diversion had ever been effective before—and it had been, to an extent, diverting other members of Eden’s Gate from pestering Joseph with questions or conversation, but he’d never tried such a blatant tactic on Elliot. Crossing his arms over his chest, he continued, “Besides, he—”

“I’m sure he’ll make time for me,” she said, her gaze flickering over his face, “in-between readings of the Book of Joseph and pondering the purpose of his existence. The chapel, then?”

He stared at her hard for a moment—he couldn’t help but feel like it was some kind of _game_ she was playing, like maybe this good-natured if not forcibly-feral deputy had more wicked in her than he thought. But when he tried to pry her expression for more details, she regarded him evenly, unflinchingly.

 _What are you playing at?_ John thought absently, gaze turning back to the church.

“Why?” John asked finally. It took a heap of effort not to let the question come out petulant, jealous— _he’d_ done all the work, _he’d_ put in the time, withstood the venom, shed the blood for it. Elliot should’ve been confessing her sins to _him_ : but here she was, demanding her confessional with _Joseph_. She might as well have said she wanted to propose to Jacob. 

In an effort to be less transparent, he continued, “I know this might come to you as a surprise, deputy, but I don’t trust you with Joseph alone after the number of times you’ve mentioned putting him in the ground. You know, “the only Seed you want to see dead”, I think was the phrase?”

“John,” Elliot drawled, chin tilted defiantly and gaze fixed on him, “please do not _condescend_ to me about the draconian machinations you _think_ are behind my wanting a moment alone with Joseph.”

“Funny,” John snapped. “That’s an awfully clever little trick, Elliot. So, what’s the game?”

“No trick, no game.” She arched a brow at him. “Right? Isn’t that what you said? ‘No game’?”

It was nonstop with her. Every time John thought he’d made a _shred_ of progress, every time he thought that she’d finally started _belonging_ to him, she went and did things like this. She might have _imagined_ she could squirm out from underneath him if she batted those pretty eyes at him, but she was going to find out that she was sorely mistaken.

“Yeah,” he managed out, trying not to crush the words between his teeth on their way out of his mouth. “I did.”

“Good.” She took in a breath like she was going to say something, and then she closed it and hesitated, lingering in some weird in-between space that she had forged all her own. John considered that he might forgive her petulance, if she took it back right then; if she really said it nice and sweet and told him he was the only one, then—

And then she turned on her heel and walked off towards the church. His eyes followed her all the way until she reached the door; when she opened it, he heard Joseph’s voice—mimicking his own surprise—say, “Why, hello, Deputy Honeysett. What a surprise,” just before she shut the door behind her with a click, effectively silencing the conversation within the church.

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

The chapel was quiet, and empty, and Elliot felt dread knotting in the pit of her stomach.

 _I have to,_ she thought, as Joseph beckoned her to the front of the church, where he sat in the first row of seating. _I have to. For Joey._

“Well, I wish I could say that I didn’t know if you’d ever come around,” Joseph said as she approached, tentatively sitting down next to him. In the eerie stillness of the chapel, his voice was somehow more potent: more unnerving, more wretchedly slick and satisfying to listen to. He offered her a small smile. “But I always knew.”

She swallowed back the nausea trying to pile up inside of her. She’d had about a handful of granola and water in the last twenty-four-hours, and she wanted to try and keep that in as much as she could.

“So, do I—” Elliot paused, fixing her gaze on the white leather-bound book perched in Joseph’s lap. “Do I just start?”

“Start what, deputy?” Joseph asked patiently. She was sure that he _knew_ —she was almost certain of it, and _fuck_ it made her want to punch his stupid fucking face in.

“My confession,” she replied, managing to keep her voice even.

The man made a low noise, feigning surprise, and turned his eyes forward to the light cutting through the Eden’s Gate symbol carved into the front of the chapel. He stayed like that for a moment; just sitting in the silence, until Elliot finally felt the uncomfortable hammering of her heart slow down, until the lack of conversation had lulled her into quiet.

“Elliot,” Joseph began, “do you know _anything_ about us?”

She took in a breath. “I just want to—”

“I’ll spare you the history lesson,” Joseph assured her. He turned so that they were facing each other, not even a foot apart, and fixed his eyes on you. “The only thing that you need to know about us is that we give a place for the downtrodden. You see that, don’t you? These people you’ve killed—you know that they’re not _bad_ people. They’re _angry_ people. And that’s not something that you’re unfamiliar with.”

Elliot dug her nails into her palms. “You don’t know me.”

“I do,” he replied gently. “Perhaps better than anyone else here. Even better—” He paused, and his gaze flickered down to her neck; she was sure that John’s bite mark was still there. Fuck, she’d been so stupid to let him do that.

_Something has to be done._

“—than John.” Joseph finished with a delicate edge to his voice. “I’ve been watching you for a long time, deputy, and I know people well. The way that you goaded Jacob, just yesterday?” He tilted his head. “That’s not the first time you’ve done something like that. It’s a…”

_Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t fucking say it._

“... Trauma response,” he murmured, and leaned in close now. “Isn’t it?”

She wanted desperately to look away, and she steeled herself against it, and when Joseph reached and took her hands and smoothed them out she thought she was going to pass out.

Elliot didn’t look away, and as Joseph’s hands held hers, she thought of a book she’d used to read, when she was little; there had been a line that always stuck with her. _Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back._

“I—know,” Elliot said after a moment, letting her hands stay there, cradled in his, so close that their foreheads were almost touching before Joseph tilted his head up. _Do it,_ she thought furiously to herself. _Do it, fucking_ — _it’s for Joey, we have to._ “I know, and—I don’t want to f-feel this—way. Anymore.”

_Something has to be done._

It felt slimy. Joseph’s breath fanning across her forehead as he said, “Oh, deputy. You don’t have to,” made her skin crawl and she was grateful that the sound that came out of her was mangled the way that grief did it, twisted into a bizarre shape that could easily be explained away as sorrow.

His hand came up and touched her cheek, the pads of his fingers tracing the shape of her jaw.

“You can tell me everything.”

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“Saw the bite mark,” Jacob said, leaned up against the side of the chapel.

John let out a suffering sigh. Elliot had been in there for an hour and a half; no one allowed to come or go when someone was making a confession, especially not to Joseph. He liked _personal_ , _intimate_ one-on-one time.

His brother continued, casually, “Didn’t realize you’d gotten so sloppy.”

“You mean you didn’t realize I was doing so _good_ with her,” John snapped.

“The job is to _recruit_ her, not _fuck_ her, John,” Jacob replied. “She’s a wild fucking animal—”

“That’s real rich coming from you, Jacob.”

“—and you _can’t_ control her,” he finished sharply. “That much is absolutely clear. You haven’t honed _anything_. You haven’t polished _any_ useful part of her. I’m starting to think that you don’t even want to do this for Joseph, but just because you haven’t stopped wanting to fuck her the second she started taking your shit away.”

“Fuck. Off.”

John took in a breath as he tried to clear his head. He didn’t want to have this conversation with Jacob—not right _now_ , anyway, not when he was thinking about whatever was happening behind the doors of the church. He just didn’t _get_ it. He’d done _all_ the work; she’d grabbed _his_ hand and said _his_ name and—

“Green’s not your color,” Jacob deadpanned.

“God, would you— _shut up?”_ he demanded. “Fuck, I put so much _fucking work_ —”

The door to the chapel opened. It was Elliot, Joseph a few steps behind her; her eyes flickered uneasily over the two of them waiting outside, and there was a heated color in her cheeks and—

 _Mine,_ that part of him said, instantly as he reached for her without thinking. _She’s mine._

“I’m tired,” Elliot said, pulling her hand out of his reach. “I’m going to go lay down.”

Jacob looked at him pointedly, but he ignored it; as she moved down the steps, Joseph stopped in the doorway, watching her go with a little smile on his face.

And then he looked at John, and he said, “She did so well, John.”

The blood went roaring through his head. _That should have been me,_ he thought furiously, turning and moving to catch up with Elliot. _That was mine to have. To know her_ — _to know Elliot, that was fucking mine, I put in all the fucking work and_ — _and_ —

“Elliot, wait,” he said, falling into step beside her. He realized, with a bit of dread, that it was panic rioting in his chest, gripping and clawing its way up his throat. But at what? What was he so concerned about?

She turned to look at him, waiting expectantly. Because he’d stopped her for something. _Right._

“Do you—” John stopped himself. “What I mean is, we should talk about how it went. Sometimes, after a confession, there’s a lot of complicated—”

She said, “No thanks.”

He stared at her, and then she started walking again, and he thought _fuck fuck fuck I hate this, I hate this so fucking much._ “Well, look, I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell me what it was you two discussed, because I need to make sure that you’re not telling Joseph anything dishonest or—”

“Seriously?” She scoffed and opened the door to the bunkhouse. “I thought this is what you _wanted.”_

“It _is!”_ he exclaimed, sliding his foot into the door before she could close it on him. “I just _think_ it’s a little suspicious after all this time—”

“A week.” Elliot rolled her eyes. There was a tension in her expression, something that John wasn’t sure was because of him or because of her conversation with Joseph; at this point, the distinction didn’t matter. 

“—all of a sudden you’re interested in having a confessional with my brother,” he finished, ignoring her casual little jab. She turned, sighing and reaching around him to close the door.

“It’s cold out, don’t leave the door open.”

“You might think that you can pull this kind of “innocent” act,” John continued heatedly, “but I spent several days handcuffed to you. I watched you kill a man with a shovel to the face. Prior to _that_ , I had to sit around and watch you sic your dog on my men and _steal_ all of their shit, so it just doesn’t make any sense to me why you would want to talk to _Joseph._ ”

“Do you _ever_ stop talking, or do you just love to hear yourself that much?” Elliot deadpanned.

“Stop avoiding the question!”

“Was there a question?” Elliot snipped, not moving from her spot where she’d planted herself even when John took a step forward, erasing most of the distance that lay between them. “All I heard was you complaining.”

“I’m not _complaining,”_ he bit out. “I just want an answer to this—weird behavior.”

Her eyes were fixed on him. They swept over him for a moment, looking and searching for something, and then came back up to meet his own.

Her eyebrows arched upward, and something sly crossed her expression, something that made his stomach twist in dreadful anticipation.

“Are you _jealous?”_ Elliot asked suddenly, immediately sending a shot of panic through John. _Caught,_ that voice in him said. _Caught-out, and fuck her for saying so. Fuck her, I deserved that time and she fucking gave it to someone else._

John gathered up the last of his anger to redirect and said, “I’m _not_ —Joseph is my—”

But it was too late: she’d sensed his reluctance, the uncertainty now tempering the furious tone, and like a proper attack dog she had latched on. “You _are_ jealous,” she prodded, needling, picking and prying and _so fucking infuriating._ “Whatever for? Are you _worried?_ Are you worried that I’ll listen to Joseph more than you? Just like Jacob, and Faith—”

“Shut up,” John bit out, trying to reel in that anger but she was _so good_ at pulling it out of him, like she’d stuck her hands straight into the cavity of his chest and started pulling it out like one of those magician’s scarves. “Elliot, shut _up.”_

“—and everyone else that belongs to your stupid fucking little doomsday cult?” Her eyes narrowed. “Worried you won’t be able to keep fucking around with my head? I hope you are. I hope you’re fucking _sweating_ at the idea that I told Joseph everything about me you’re dying to know—”

“You don’t know what you’re—”

“—every single little detail about every sordid thing I’ve ever fucking done, John.” Elliot’s voice was liquid honey, sickly-sweet and brimming with a venom he’d never heard. “I hope you are. I hope it drives you insane—I hope you can’t stop thinking about it for the rest of your fucking life and maybe, _maybe_ then you’ll _finally_ understand even a modicum of the absolute fucking _misery_ you’ve put me through, you—”

John kissed her. She’d closed the distance between them in her little rampage, and now he took her face in his hands and kissed her to shut her up, to stop the barrage of verbal assault—blissful, hard-earned silence followed, even through the furious roaring in his ears, even as the anger was ripping up his spine like a wildfire. He felt her instantly tense; for a second, John was certain that she’d jerk back, squirm out of his grip like the little viper she was and they’d be back to licking their wounds and circling each other like strays again.

But she didn’t. She curled her fingers into the front of his shirt and held, keeping _him_ from pulling back, and with very little ceremony her lips parted under the pressure of his silkily; his hands dropped from her face to her hips and gripped. The blonde shifted, like she was trying to get used to the way his hands held her, slotted so perfectly against the dip and curve of her hips.

“Fuck, you make me so _fucking_ mad,” John ground out when she pulled back to catch her breath. He didn’t give her much time—the second her head tilted back to get a breath, he was chasing her, teeth catching her lip and then pulling her in for another kiss, greedy, _hungry._ The infuriation still vibrated straight through him, but _this_ —this was a much better alternative to listening to Elliot try and rip him apart. “Such a fucking—brat—”

“F-Fuck you,” Elliot snapped against his mouth. Her hands slid up to knot in his hair, and when his hands pressed on the small of her back to keep her close, her body molded easily to his; compliant, obedient, even when her mouth wanted to pretend otherwise. John walked her back—to somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t just floating aimlessly in the middle of the room—and when he found a wall to press her against, Elliot made the softest, sweetest noise he’d ever heard from her.

It was almost _too_ good, a part of him thought—as though he’d been so thoroughly conditioned to expect her to pull away, to drive some space between them, that _now,_ when her fingers knotted in his hair and her breath hitched, it might have been a trick.

No trick, though. She’d said it herself. And now Elliot squirmed against him, hands drifting to his shoulders as his mouth went to her neck, tracing the faded bruise he’d left there just days ago.

“You need to—learn to watch that—fucking mouth of yours,” John managed out between breaths. “It’s going to get you—”

The slide of her fingers against the bare skin beneath his shirt, just below the collar, distracted him—but the delight of it only lasted for a moment, because before he could let himself indulge in it, in Elliot _touching him_ like she _wanted_ to, she had gripped his shirt right at the top where the buttons were undone and ripped. _Hard._

The sound of buttons scattering on the floor rattled around in his brain. His brain felt fuzzy, muggy and filled with cotton. Two trains of thought competed for attention immediately: _the fucking brat ripped my shirt open_ and _fuck fuck fuck I want her mouth on me so fucking bad,_ ringing like two different car alarms going off at the same time.

Furious. He was _furious_ —and she was _supposed_ to be bending for him, begging and pleading for him to take her, but instead she was— _this._

“Do you have _any_ idea,” John started, breathless and feeling that incensed kind of wildness that Elliot seemed so intent on drawing out of him, “how much that fucking shirt—”

Elliot’s fingers curled at the nape of his neck and she pulled him down to kiss him. “Shut up,” she said into the liplock. She didn’t lean away or try and stop him as his fingers slipped beneath the hem of her sweater, finding purchase in the delicate dip of her ribs. “Poor John, can’t believe he has one less designer shirt to wear during the end of the world. And by the way, my _mouth_ got me exactly what I—”

John’s teeth caught the sensitive skin on her neck in the same place they had before, but this time he was less gentle; he worried the spot with his teeth until she whimpered, until he knew the bruise would last longer this time around. The sound went straight to the heat pooling in the pit of his stomach.

“ _Exactly_ what you wanted?” he growled against the now-hot spot on her neck. His fingers slid down to the top of her jeans, and for the first time in this moment he waited, dragging his thumb along the cold metal of the top button. “If you were waiting to get a little rough with me, baby, you just had to say—”

“Anything I want,” Elliot interrupted, and when John pulled back to look at her, there was a gorgeous high-color in her cheeks. Her fingers brushed his where they stayed, patient, at the lip of her jeans; “That’s what you said, right? I can have anything I want, and you’ll give it to me?”

John regarded her for a moment, trying to figure out what it was she was trying to leverage for this time. He didn’t want to play this game anymore—he didn’t want to keep dancing around it. Everything in him leaned into the want, _hard_ , straining against each earthly bind that kept him from taking exactly what he desired the most. He thought about how sweet it would be when she finally submitted—when she finally looked at him and said, _Please, John, I need you,_ and that second alarm started winning, bundling up that fury for later, for better use.

“Yes,” he breathed out when she pulled him in to kiss him again. “Yes, just ask, El—”

He leaned in and trailed his mouth down to the dip of her collarbone, partially obscured by the fabric of her sweater. The blonde shivered at that touch alone, and he was reminded, again, that he wanted to figure out just how _starved_ she was for him—how _much_ she wanted his hands, his mouth. What she’d say to get it.

“Fuck me.” She bit the words out, almost like she didn’t want to say them, and then her fingers were tugging at the buckle of his belt. “Fuck me, after you take this off—God, this is the stupidest—f-fucking belt I’ve ever seen—”

“You are such a _brat,”_ John growled. When she dropped his belt with a clatter to the floor, he deftly undid her jeans, pushing them down and reveling in the sharp intake of breath he heard from her. Against her skin, he said, “These come _off,”_ and slid down to his knees, taking the pesky article of clothing with him. Elliot’s eyes flickered uneasily for a moment, but as John discarded her jeans to the side and pressed his mouth to the inside of her thigh, that seemed to disappear.

“J- _John_ —”

“Elliot,” he rumbled, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses further up. “Something you want to ask for?” And then, eyes darting up to gaze at her through his lashes, he said, “You’ve been awfully rude this whole time, so you have to ask nicely if you want something, baby.”

“Fuck—you,” Elliot bit out, and then John pressed his mouth against the part of her that wanted his attention the most, fingers digging into the soft skin at her hips as he made a low, hungry noise against the fabric of her underwear. “F—God, fuck you—”

His fingers tugged at the hem of remaining cotton, not quite pulling down but implying that he’d certainly _like_ to, if she did what she was supposed to. 

“Bet you taste so good,” John rumbled against her. “Bet you make the sweetest fucking noises when someone eats you out, too—”

“S-Stop,” Elliot moaned, “stop t-talking like—”

“I don’t think so,” John replied. “You’re going to be a good girl and listen to it all— how I wanted you so badly this whole time,” he plunged on, pulling the scrap of fabric lower. “Wanted to hear you make those noises for me—so fucking _pretty_ , El, just ask me nicely and I’ll take care of you.”

She whimpered, the noise a little frantic, and he felt her fingers knot and twist into his hair just before she said, “Not—Don’t, with your—”

He raised a brow inquisitively, waiting for her to elaborate. “Come on, then. Can’t give you what you want if you don’t tell me.” And then, unable to stifle his delight: “ _Explicitly.”_

“You fuckhead,” she snapped, the frustration finally bubbling over. “ _Fuck_ , I hate you—Come here—”

Despite the desire to do the exact opposite of what she’d said, John followed the tug of her hands back to a standing position. One of her hands dragged him in for a kiss, furious and fervent like she was trying to wash herself of something, the other taking his hand and guiding it just between them, until his fingers were sliding further and further, and—

“You’re so fucking wet,” John groaned against her mouth, the feeling of the slick, wet heat of her enough to send his brain sprinting. His basest desires, carnal and animalistic, competing with the part of his brain that wanted to drag this out more.

And then her hips rocked against his fingers, desperate, and she relented and whimpered, “ _Please_ , John,” and he thought if he was a lesser man he would have broken right then and there. The sound of her sweet voice saying it—the thing that he’d wanted all along—was enough to stoke the side of him that didn’t particularly care about making it long, and only wanted to make it _good._

“Oh, _so_ well-behaved _._ ” John could barely think straight, the sound of her saying his name _like that_ making every neuron in his brain fire rapidly at the same time. “Aren’t you? Wish I’d known you’d behave so well for me.”

“S-Shut the fuck up _,”_ Elliot moaned, frustrated and aroused as she fucked herself on his fingers, her hands sliding along his chest; in the haze of arousal he could feel her fingers tracing the scars, tracing the tattoos, like she was committing them to memory even though she couldn’t see them. 

John reached with his free hand, pushing at the hem of her sweater. “Off,” he murmured, and for once she obliged; her fingers hesitated at the bottom, just for a second, before he beckoned his fingers against her and kissed the slope of her jaw. It seemed to startle her out of whatever thing was disparaging her, and she slipped the fabric off over her head and discarded it to the side.

The webbing of scars— sharp, angled gossamer strings starting at the top of her hip bones—reached up into her abdomen; he could see them out of the corner of his eye, and for a moment, he let himself feel the anger he’d been feeling before, the _jealousy,_ that Joseph might know where they came from while he still didn’t.

 _Well,_ something petulant inside of him said, _at least Joseph doesn’t know this._

John slid his fingers from her and brought them to his mouth. Elliot’s eyes, a gorgeous blue blown nearly black with want, fixed on him as he made a low, wicked sound around the taste of her, slick on his tongue. He dragged his fingers from his mouth; she watched as though she wondered what his mouth might feel like on her instead of his fingers, he said, “You taste so _sweet_ , El.”

He felt her hand go to the nape of his neck just so she could pull him in; both of his hands found her hips again and she kissed him, sliding her tongue along his until he was hooking his arms under her to lift her against the wall. There was no time left anymore to think about all the things that he had wanted to do with her—Elliot might have winced with the force of his pinning, but if she did it only lasted for a second; her fingers raked through his hair and she arched up against him.

“Fuck me,” she breathed, “John, please, I—” And then, biting the words out: “—want you—”

For a second, Elliot gripped him; he watched her eyelashes flutter as he leaned in, _so close so close so close_ , the wicked heat of her tempting him but the drag of her nails on his skin slowing him down. It was the same way she’d held onto him when things became too much—when the world felt like it was splitting around her, shredding and fraying.

He reached up, tilting her face until they were looking at each other. “Yeah, that’s— _fuck,_ that’s it,” John managed out, “give me those pretty eyes, baby, right here with me—I want to see you when—when I—”

Elliot moaned, just as he pressed into her; she sighed his name out a little like a prayer, _John,_ like he was the only thing keeping her grounded anymore, every second spent in that torturous drag of a moment before he finally pushed into her completely feeling like an eternity. And then he _did,_ hips slotted against hers, and it took every ounce of his self-control not to just—just fuck her like a madman, but—

But then she said, “Oh, _fuck_ , _John_ —” and the way her voice caught on his name, twisting and whimpering, had his movements stuttering, the primal part of his brain kicking into overdrive as her fingers twisted in his hair and sent delicious pain prickling down his scalp. 

“Holy shit,” he managed out hazily, “so fucking good, El, you’re so fucking good, _fuck_ I wanted—wanted this—wanted _you_.”

He buried his face into her neck when she tensed and tightened around him, enough to drive him mad, but as if that wasn’t enough, she was moaning out _yesyesyes_ into his ear with each cant of their bodies, breathless and wanting. 

“Fucking—that’s my good fucking girl,” John managed out between hitched breaths, grinding the words out into her skin. “So tight, but you’re taking me so well, like you—like you were _made_ for me.” He felt his attention span stretching, caught somewhere between the feeling of fucking her and indulging in her sounds. “Told you. Fuck, I _told_ you that you’d be saying yes for me, I f-fucking—”

Her hands fluttered, trying to find purchase somewhere; John’s mouth sucked a dark, heady mark on her neck while he fucked her, hips slanting against hers at rate more punishing than he had anticipated she’d like. But she keened every time he pushed back into her, moaning his name into his ear and dragging her nails against his skin until he was certain he’d have marks left over.

“Can’t believe baby’s letting me fuck her,” he purred into the elegant slope of her neck, and when he did he could feel her tighten around him, her breath hitching. “Just wish you’d—f-fuck—let me eat you out—”

“I want—John, l-look,” Elliot managed, squirming until he lifted his face from the juncture of her shoulder and neck, until their noses were brushing, and she almost sounded relieved when their eyes met and she sighed. “Yes,” she moaned, “just like this, I’m—I’m so—close—”

He bit back a wrecked noise, gripping her hips with bruising force as he fucked her and then sliding one hand between their bodies to drag the pad of his thumb against the most sensitive part of her—and _oh,_ but she looked so lovely, then, lips parted and lashes fluttering as she wrenched on his hair and moaned out his name brokenly.

 _John John John,_ she sighed as he fucked her through the high, eyes fixed on his and dark with desire. John felt a ricochet of hot, wicked pleasure sprint down his spine at the sound of it; he stilled his hips just as his body tried to lurch, stopping the feeling right in its tracks.

“F-Fuck,” he groaned. “Don’t—don’t fucking— _move.”_

 _Desperate._ He felt desperate, the animal inside of him demanding. _Take take take,_ it said, the mantra only louder when Elliot—hazy with want as she came down from her high—dragged him in for a kiss. _Mine, all mine, all mine._

The blonde's lashes fluttered for a moment; he felt more than he saw the way the corners of her mouth ticked upward. _Wicked_ , he thought, when she sighed and arched prettily against him, almost sending him right over that cliff.

And then, as though she knew exactly what he wanted to hear, she said, “You feel so _good_ , John.”

He felt a wrecked, desperate noise come out of him, stifled by their kiss. “S-Stop—” 

"Stop telling you how good you feel inside me?" Elliot prompted into their almost-liplock, nails digging into the bone of his jaw as she held him there, _punishing._ Payback, for all that shit he’d been talking before. She’d gotten him trapped and she fucking knew it. “You don't like it when I say, oh, _John,_ nobody else—”

“ _Elliot_ —”

“—makes me feel—”

“ _Fuck_ . Shut _up_ , I—want—” He spat the words out viciously. When she pulled back, those eyes of hers were sharp; she knew exactly what she was doing, and it sent another trail of heat licking down his spine, _sprinting sprinting sprinting_ as his body tried to hurl itself over the edge. Of _course_ she knew; of course she wanted to dig and dig and dig at him. “You hellion, I want this to fucking l-last—”

“You said _anything I_ _want_ ,” Elliot reminded him viciously, and the edge of her voice was almost enough to finish him right there. _Fuck fuck fuck, so fucking_ _ungrateful_ , but the bite of it was so _good_ , the venom like a drug straight to his nervous system. “And I _want_ you to _come_ , John.”

"Oh, _fuck_ —"

 _Too much,_ his brain thought as a broken, stuttering moan fell out of him, his head dropping into the crook of her neck, pulling out of her just as his climax hit; white-hot pleasure crashed over him in a tidal wave that had him panting her name into her skin as he finished himself off. He pressed a hand against the wall as he caught his breath, feeling his eyes flicker as the adrenaline and euphoria brutalized his senses. His brain kept playing it on loop—the sting of her nails, the way she'd bit out, _You said anything I want,_ demanding.

John stayed like that for a second, his breaths falling in rhythm with Elliot’s, before he lifted his head from her shoulder. He reached up to take her face in his hand, and when he did her eyes drifted to his; present, but tired.

“You,” John managed out, “are such a fucking _horror_ . _Fuck_ —you f-fucking—”

The filter was gone. That carefully manicured filter that he worked so hard to maintain had been obliterated by his finish. Elliot watched him with the most infuriating half-lidded gaze as he bit out, “Should’ve fucking finished inside of you, El, teach you how to _behave_.”

“Fuck. You,” Elliot replied, but there was almost a lazy drawl to her voice, and he realized that she was _relaxed._ For perhaps what was the first time since they’d been around each other. “Next time, I might not let you come at all.”

His eyes narrowed, but her words _did_ send a delicious little thrill through him. _Mine mine mine,_ that wicked voice chanted, delighted as her venom, delighted at her wickedness. He could see the remnants of his bite marks on her neck and collarbone, little spots where his fingers had gripped against the sharpest part of her hip bones. And as she let him keep her there, her gaze turned to him inquisitively, he realized—she smelled like him, and she was covered in him, and there wasn’t anything in her that wasn’t _for him_ in that moment.

It felt good. He felt vindicated. All of that hard work _hadn’t_ been for nothing. She’d found refuge in him and nobody else and that meant she was all his. John leaned in, pausing before he let his fingers drift down her neck while he went to kiss her; waiting for the recoil.

It didn’t come. She let him kiss her, hands rested on his chest as he did. _Oh yes,_ he thought delightedly, _look at her, all mine._

“Look at that,” he murmured against her mouth as she sighed and squirmed. “Who would’ve thought you could be so _sweet_ for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book that Elliot references in her conversation with Joseph is "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle.
> 
> What did they talk about??? Will we ever know??? Probably, but idk man!
> 
> Thank you again for reading!


	15. down the rabbit hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moves are made, everyone's playing a game and then says "What game? No game", and we all know it's a lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HM not much to say about this chapter except that I had a ball writing it and I hope that comes through when you're reading it as well!! It's a joy to finally move some plot pieces a long and also explore some different narratives--especially Faith's, who I had been nervous about writing but made myself do it anyway.
> 
> I really hope you enjoy it! @starcrier blessed me with her input (per usual; she's an angel, what can I say) and of course I want to thank @lilwritingraven for helping me with the pacing of this chapter, as well as @baeogorath for letting me send them memes at like 3am and talk abt how Cora and Elliot are going to end up in a domestic partnership with many dog children.
> 
> Uh also should put on here I don't know how the laws or anything work. I'm just here for a good time.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include: canon typical violence, some forced drug use (Bliss) that results in some PEAK emotional manipulation, a friendly reminder that this is not a love story about people in a healthy relationship but just a love story, sort of. Also I love tropes and no one can stop me.

She’s in a bar. 

She’s in a bar, and she’s twenty-two, and Joey is off to go get a drink and she doesn’t think she likes the one she has very much.

She’s in a bar, and she’s twenty-two, and John Seed locks eyes with her from across the bar and it feels like her entire body is getting eaten up by flame. She’s never had a man look at her like _he_ looks at her—starved, like he could never get his fill of her, prowling through the crowd of bodies milling about in the bar to beeline straight for her.

 _Wanted._ He wants her—and it twists in her stomach, writhing, white-hot and intoxicating and the second he closes in he says, “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I know,” she says, feeling his hands on either side of her neck, cradling. Her lashes flutter and the oxygen is so thin, like they’re somewhere very high, but they aren’t; they’re just _there_ , together, the wildfire of him greedily devouring the kindling of her bones.

This is the part where Joey is supposed to come in. A part of her knows this: that any minute now, she will get pulled away, that even as John leans down to kiss her, the dream will evaporate and she will be left remembering that moment that she missed so many years ago.

But the dream doesn’t end. John’s lips brush hers; his fingers wind through her hair; _John,_ she says, because nothing in her is not _for him,_ just the kind of girl that he likes—the kind that’s hurting, and that hurts others.

“Just like me,” John says against her mouth. He disentangles his hands from her hair and reaches for her own, bringing them for her to see.

They are drenched in blood. Sticky, wet, crimson. A small, tiny part of her brain says, _we can’t know for sure whose,_ but she knows.

_Joey._

“See?” John says, his fingers biting into her palms, his teeth catching her lip. _“Just like me.”_

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Elliot’s eyes fluttered open. At first, she felt her body brace for some kind of impact—she had woken up in an unfamiliar bed, with unfamiliar sounds of voices outside, and someone’s breath fanning her neck. She shifted, forcing her eyes open despite the strange panic crawling up her throat, and peeked over her shoulder.

It was John. She thought, _Oh._ And then: _Hm._

Not the kind of dread she had been anticipating. It was different than fearing a monster; it was the kind of dread that came with being _known_ down in the most vulnerable parts of you, the kind that she’d felt after she’d stood up from laying everything out in front of Joseph. She’d felt sick, then, and slimy; every detail of every memory about that night years ago before moving back to Hope County had made her skin _burn_.

And then there had been John. Hands gripping, mouth hungry, but it was always: _Anything you want, El._ He’d done everything exactly the way she’d wanted it. John wasn’t the first man she had been with since her time in the city, but he _was_ the first to—well, _mean something,_ and wasn’t that a dreadful thought?

Pressing her face back to the pillow, the unfamiliar weight of his arm around her tightened when she shifted away.

“Stop squirming,” John rumbled. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“This is a twin bed, fucker,” Elliot replied, ignoring the unease that was beginning to knot in her stomach. She didn’t know why it was there, inside of her, until she realized she was—happy? “It wasn’t meant to hold both of us.” And then, bitterly: “ _Fuck,_ you’re hot.”

She kicked her leg out from under the sheets, exhaling sharply as the complaint left her mouth. It was too late to choose better wording; she could feel John’s self-pleased aura radiating off of him almost instantly as he buried his face into her neck.

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he said, as his fingers skimmed beneath the sheet to trace the lines of her scars. She knew that it infuriated him that she hadn’t told him what they were from—but at least like this, he wasn’t interrogating her, contenting himself with feeling them rather than knowing them. She squirmed and grimaced.

“I mean like a space heater,” she grumbled. Tucking her arm up under the pillow, she added, “I don’t remember saying you could sleep here.”

John grinned against the back of her neck. “Are you kicking me out?”

A long, tired sigh slipped out of her, muffled by the pillow. Every part of her ached in a pleasant way, and John’s warmth pressed up behind her as they lay crammed on the bed in the bunkhouse was a grounding one; the kind that might let her sleep a little more. The darkness in the room meant that she hadn’t dozed off for very long, and even now her eyes felt heavy.

She knew that she’d barely gotten the amount of sleep that she _needed_ since Joey’s death, let alone _wanted_. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was the gore and grit of it; it sat just behind her eyelids, waiting for her to try and get some rest and move forward to assault her with the memory of Joey’s gruesome murder.

The broken jaw, the gutted chest cavity. The flowers, packed so tight and full she could have rested her cheek on it and been held like a pillow. 

And John’s arms, circling her: _Don’t look, El._

“You can stay,” Elliot said after a moment, keeping her eyes fixed on the wall. “This one time.”

“You’re in an agreeable mood.” John paused, nosing past the hair gathering in the crook of her neck. “You want to tell me how your confession went now? Must’ve been pretty good, considering what you let me—”

She groaned. “I changed my mind. Get out.”

“You don’t _have_ to talk about it, I just—”

“You are so fucking annoying,” she said, rolling over in the bed to look at him. With that grin slapped on his face and his hair tousled out of its normally meticulous slick-back, he looked boyish and young, not like a cultist maniac; it was probably the most frustrating thing about him, that he _could_ look this way. That he _could_ have moments of sincerity, but that he never seemed to fall into the realm of “good”, because every time she felt herself relaxing around him he did _something_ to remind her why it was a bad idea _._ “I’m not going to talk to you about my confession.”

“Well,” John said petulantly, “why _not_?”

Her fingers traced the Sloth scar just under his collarbone. He had a myriad of them—tattoos, too—and while she hadn’t quite gotten them all memorized, it was nice to let the buzzing of her brain focus on parsing them out instead of everything else.

The problem was that Elliot didn’t know how to tell him the truth of it; that she had only told Joseph those things about who she had been and who she was now because she knew that he wanted her to, just like she knew John wanted her to let him kiss her, and just like she knew Jacob wanted her to give him a reason to push her to her limits and really test her. She _couldn’t_ tell John that, because even though it was _true_ , it also didn’t change the fact that he complicated things for her more than she should have let him—like everything, John was an outlying variable which Elliot had no way to brace for.

“It’s not good pillow talk,” she said after a minute, skimming her fingers along the jut of his collarbone. “And I don’t want to talk about it, and that should be enough.” And then, decisively, when John opened his mouth, she said, “It _is_ enough.”

John closed his mouth pointedly, and then said, “You certainly know how to ruin a good time.”

“Goodnight, John.”

She rolled back onto her other side and waited for the departure of his warmth. It didn’t go anywhere—instead, John buckled down, keeping his arm wrapped snug around her abdomen as his mouth traced the slope of her shoulder.

“You’ll tell me,” he said after a moment, his voice a pleasant rumble, “eventually.”

 _We’ll fucking see about that,_ she thought, closing her eyes with a muted sigh.

“ _Goodnight,_ John.”

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“You’re late.”

Jacob sounded fully unimpressed, arms crossed over his chest as John stepped into the chapel. It was to be expected, he supposed; after all, they were supposed to have been convening about ten minutes ago, but sleeping in the bunkhouse meant his alarm hadn’t gone off, and—

And, even if it had, he wasn’t sure that he’d have rushed out of bed anyway.

“Sorry,” John said, not feeling nor sounding very sorry at all, he was sure. Joseph was seated patiently by the table, the radio set to the side as it casually flicked through channels on a timer, meant to scan and make sure they weren’t missing out on any chatter. He glanced at John as he came in, his eyes inquisitive, but remained silent.

And then Jacob announced, “Your shirt’s all fucked up.”

“Didn’t have time to change,” John replied. He _wanted_ to say it—he really did—but he mostly wanted Jacob to _ask._ “I came right over as soon as I woke up. What do we have on the Family?”

“Hey? John?” Jacob leaned down against the table, palms flat on the surface, fixing him with those steely eyes. “What the fuck?”

Faith stifled a laugh, her eyes glimmering wide and doe-like on her face. “You aren’t going to tell us what happened to your shirt?” she asked.

“I feel like this is detracting from the purpose of the meeting,” John answered, trying his very best to feign innocence and focus in the face of the attention, which—after all of Jacob’s moaning and groaning about his incompetency with the deputy, he was enjoying immensely.

Jacob pushed the collar of John’s bedraggled shirt aside with one brisk movement. “Are those _nail_ _marks?”_

“Oh, John,” Faith sighed.

“Well, I don’t want to _brag,”_ he said, brushing Jacob’s hand off of him, “and I won’t, because there’s no reason to. I’m just doing my—you know, my job.”

“So,” Joseph said, finally, “the deputy is...?”

His older brother arched a brow loftily at him, watching him from across the table. He didn’t seem to be enjoying John’s little show quite as much as his other siblings—in fact, Jacob seemed the _most_ pleased, that wicked grin splitting across his face as soon as John said, “I think you could consider her _converted._ ”

“Little John finally got around to it, huh?” the red-head said, sounding quite amused.

Joseph waited. “Is that so?”

“She confessed to you,” John explained, “and then—well.” He glanced at Faith for a moment. “ _Confessed_ to me. And actually, you know, Joseph, I was thinking about that little problem we were discussing a few days ago.”

He leaned in against the table, pleased to have their rapt attention—most of all, Joseph’s; his brother’s gaze was fixed on him expectantly, waiting patiently for the elaboration that he hoped was coming.

“Problem?” Jacob prompted. “You mean Burke?”

“I mean the _whole_ thing,” John replied. “Burke, whether he got out or not, what’s going to happen once we get rid of the Family if someone tries to come down on us. Joseph’s right when he says there are ways to make people not talk. Who knows if the Resistance members got out? And even if they did, who’s to say they won’t leave this place behind them forever and never look back?”

Jacob crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay?”

“Okay, _so_ ,” he continued, and then paused and said, “bear with me—”

“John.”

“What if—Elliot and I got married?” he finished. All three sets of eyes blinked at him for a moment, and then he said, “ _If_ this goes to court, and _if_ we have witnesses pulled up against us, Elliot can opt out of testifying against _me_ if she’s married to me. Only a complete moron would put her up on the stand after hearing that she’s a Seed, and—”

“Stupid,” Jacob interrupted. “Bad plan. If she does get put up on the stand against one of _us_ , what is she going to say, John?”

“She likes Joseph,” he ventured. “Sort of. Right? The confession went well, you said.”

“And me,” Faith offered. “I’m probably her favorite.”

“That’s very true,” Joseph conceded.

John plunged on, “She has a good reputation. She grew up here, went to school here, knows all of the locals, worked on law enforcement—”

“And she’s fucking _nuts,”_ Jacob deadpanned. “They’re going to take one look at her body count and put her in a psych ward. I don’t care if you want to have a bride, John, but don’t pretend that it’s for us and not for you. We all know the _second_ you put your eyes on her—”

“Well, it was really fucking stupid of us to let Burke get out!” John snapped. “It doesn’t look _good_ , you know? The prospects? Not to be a big bummer, but I’m trying to make a win out of a losing hand!”

Joseph lifted his hand to signal that an end to the discourse had come. He settled back against his chair for a moment, pensive, eyes fixed on the Eden’s Gate symbol carved into the front of the chapel; it felt a little like agony to sit and wait for him to break the silence, and John could sense the unease prickling in his stomach.

“The deputy has confided in me the extent of her past,” he began at last, “which matches up with everything we dug up on her before, when she came back.” He sighed thoughtfully. “She was truthful, and willing, and _so_ vulnerable. It really was remarkable—and with all that time she spent fighting us. You should have seen her, John.”

 _I know,_ John thought when the spiteful venom shot straight through him, taking away some of the victory that had rooted itself there in his chest. _I know, I know, that should have been fucking mine._

“She confessed to me, and then…” His eyes landed on John. Delicately, he continued, “... willingly indulged you.”

“I’ll say,” Jacob muttered.

“It seems that our deputy is turning a new leaf, after all.” Joseph’s gaze flickered absently down to the table, and he asked, “So. She’s agreed to it? This idea of yours?”

 _No,_ John thought, with no absence of affection and frustration in equal amounts. If he was being honest, he thought that she wouldn’t have agreed to it even if every bad thing they had ever done to her was erased; that was just the kind of woman that Elliot was. All the more reason to want her. All the more reason to make the taming sweeter.

And if tying Elliot to him legally, by name, didn’t get them _out_ of this mess, it would at least ensure that she stayed in it. 

With him.

After a moment, he ventured, “It could require a little extra persuasion.”

“Hol-ee shit,” Jacob said. “You came with a half-baked idea that you haven’t even gotten _confirmation_ on? John? _John?”_

Feeling another bout of bickering come on, Faith let out a little exhale of breath and came to a stand, smoothing her hands along the skirt of her dress. Both Jacob and John stopped their oncoming fight to look at her—almost as effective at garnering attention as Joseph, his little snake.

“I’ll talk to her,” Faith said. “It shouldn’t come from _you._ You’ll just piss her off.”

John narrowed his eyes. “It takes a _rapport,_ Faith, and you’ve barely spent any time with her.”

“It’s not about the amount of time, it’s about the quality of the time,” she snipped. “Fifteen minutes with her and she was willingly offering up information about her childhood to me.”

“Okay,” John replied tartly, _“and?”_

“When I was kidnapped by the Family, they kept referring to their— _substance_ as ‘opening them to the influence’,” the blonde said primly. “And when I heard that, I thought, what a good idea! It’s easy to overwhelm the body with Bliss, you know. Send someone on a nice trip. But if you just give them a little bit at a time? Over a longer time? Sort of like what Jacob does.”

“We’re not letting Jacob do his brainwashing on her,” he bit out.

“No, _John_ , we’re not,” Faith sighed. “I just mean—give her enough where she doesn’t realize what’s happening. It just makes her…” She searched for a moment, and then smiled brightly. _“Soft.”_

 _Oh,_ he thought, _I do like it when she’s soft._

“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Joseph said, before he gathered up the threads of his thoughts from images of Elliot _soft_ , burying her face into his neck and sighing prettily. “And if she’s more open to your influence because of it, John, then what’s to lose anyway?”

“Well, since we’re all settled on this fucking insane idea,” Jacob said, spreading the map back out on the table, “Faith will take care of that while I educate everyone on what’s going on with our Family, yeah?”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

When she woke up, John was gone, and with him the satisfying warmth that had lulled her back to sleep. In his absence, Boomer had curled up on the floor next to her bed; John must have let him in on his way out.

“Hey, buddy,” Elliot murmured, reaching down and ruffling his dark fur affectionately. He made a low, whining groan, blinking big brown eyes up at her. “You’re ready to be done, huh?”

Boomer rolled onto his back, stretching his legs luxuriously as she patted his stomach. She was pleased to find that John had left almost no trace of himself—no articles of clothing, no sticky note left on the bedside table. It was as if he hadn’t ever been there.

Well, almost, anyway. She slid out of bed and grabbed some clean clothes from her bag, making her way to the bathroom to start the shower. When she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she almost started; there were marks blooming on her neck, her collarbone, her hips. Her lips were kiss-reddened, her hair disheveled. She thought for a second that she’d never looked more like a stranger and also felt like herself in a very long time—though perhaps that had to do with having a clear path out of Hope County. As close to clear as she could get.

About ten minutes into the shower and she heard the door to the bunkhouse open; Boomer barked once, and Elliot stuck her head out of the shower to say, “John, I really only _just_ got into the shower—”

“It’s me.” It was Faith’s voice. Softer, sweeter, more welcome even all things considered. Elliot hadn’t forgotten the way that Faith had stuck around to try and comfort her, even if she knew she’d been told to do it, and even if she knew that Faith had to have been doing it for _something._ The only person who had ever done that because they cared for her was dead, now.

“Oh.” Elliot paused, clearing her throat. “Um—I’m sorry, I thought—” _Fuck fuck fuck._

“I can wait,” Faith continued, closer to the bathroom door now. “I was just going to see if you would go on a walk with me. We’re not allowed to leave the compound alone anymore.”

Faith’s voice sounded small, filled with a kind of longing that Elliot recognized in places of herself, too—the kind of longing that she’d felt before she’d met Joey: to be around _someone, anyone_. She swallowed thickly. 

This wasn’t on her agenda for the day. She was supposed to be grabbing a map, trying to get to the radio without getting seen, figuring out where they kept all of their guns. She’d gathered what ammo and weapons she could at Fall’s End, but it had been slim pickings.

“I’ll hurry,” Elliot said after a moment, and she meant it. She sprinted through the rest of her shower; somehow, the idea of keeping Faith waiting was more tragic than leaving any of the other Seeds waiting, and maybe it was because Faith wasn’t even a real Seed at all and somewhere along the way had gotten snared in their trap.

She had to be safe. She had to be careful. And that meant not trusting a Seed—even an honorary one. _Especially_ an honorary one.

Once she had dressed, she stepped out into the main room of the bunkhouse to find Faith waiting patiently. Unlike John, she didn’t regard Boomer with a look of wary disdain (though it had been a while since he’d done that), but rather with a little smile planted on her face; the Heeler’s hair was up, and he made a low warning noise that rumbled right out of his chest, but he laid flat on the floor and looked instantly to Elliot for a cue on whether their new guest was dangerous or not. She waved her hand at him.

“Sorry about that,” Elliot said before she could stop herself—there was no reason for her to apologize for Boomer being wary of her, considering all of the variables, but Faith’s sweet face gazing wide-eyed and trusting at her was enough to dig right in the grit of her in a way that John or Joseph couldn’t have ever. 

“It’s okay,” Faith replied amusedly. “I know John locked him up in a cage.”

“Yeah,” she said dryly, shifting on her feet. She was glad she’d packed mostly sweaters, a few high-necked, to help conceal the remaining bruising. With a gesture for Faith to head out of the bunkhouse, Elliot followed her out into the late morning—but not before she grabbed a handgun out from under the bed, flicked the safety on, and tucked it under her sweater and into the back of her jeans.

Outside, the sun had receded behind a thin veil of gray clouds, and in the distance, thicker ones started to roll in. Angry, boisterous kinds of clouds. She hoped it was going to storm again; she loved an Autumn storm, but she had the feeling that it would only be a nuisance in the end.

“I can’t believe how _gloomy_ it is,” Faith murmured, pouting. Without any ceremony, she took Elliot’s hand in hers, interlacing their fingers like they had been friends forever; a sweet perfume scent wafted off of her, and it smelled _familiar_ , but Elliot couldn’t figure out what it was. Boomer sprinted on ahead of them, doubling back every once in a while as he got his stretch in, and the girl continued, “Jacob says it might even _snow._ ”

Elliot grimaced at the mention of Jacob but trailed obediently next to Faith. It was so much harder to maintain the anger, even knowing that she had been just as complicit. Faith was just _so—_

“It’s snowed as early as August here, once,” she offered, dragging her mind away from what it was that bothered her the most: that Joseph, Jacob, and John were all somewhere, convening, likely about her. Likely about things that she needed to know. “What are your brothers doing?”

“Talking about boring stuff,” Faith replied with a little laugh as they walked out from the gate of the compound. And then, with a sly little look on her face, she said, “Talking about you, too.”

A little lurch caught in her stomach. “What about?” she asked faintly, and Faith shrugged.

“John’s upset he doesn’t know what you talked to Joseph about.” As they broke away from the dirt path and went instead closer to the forest, Boomer ducking and darting as he chased a mouse, Faith gave Elliot’s hand a little squeeze. “He _really_ likes you, deputy.”

“You can call me Elliot,” she clarified. The title felt wrong, now that Joey was gone. Now that Whitehorse was nowhere to be seen. She wasn’t really even a deputy anymore. “And did he tell you that? He’s got a funny way of saying things.”

“I can just tell. John’s my brother, and he’s bad at hiding his feelings.”

Elliot smothered a laugh before it could come out of her. “I suppose he is.”

They walked like that for a few moments; Faith, remarking often about something that caught her eye, Elliot offering whatever information she could about the flora and fauna, and on one occasion Boomer sat still enough to let Faith brush her fingers over his ears. It was a strange, suspended sort of moment in time, Elliot thought. Like they had entered a bubble entirely their own, perfumed by Faith’s floral-sweet perfume, the freedom of walking outside of the compound, and the gentleness that Faith carried with her.

She was so remarkably unlike any of her siblings that it was almost possible to forget she had ever been one at all. That at one point, she had held Joey captive at John’s behest, in a way to wrench on the softest parts of her.

“I’m very sorry,” she murmured after a moment, garnering Elliot’s attention. “About Miss Hudson. You know, they kept us together. The Family. She was…”

 _Oh,_ Elliot thought, as the faint wash of grief slipped up in her, trying to climb up her walls. _Oh, please don’t say something lovely. I just can’t stand it._

“So kind,” Faith murmured at last, “to me. Even after everything. When I was crying, and scared, and thought no one was going to come for me, she held me. She always said that you were going to come, no matter what.”

The words rinsed her with a different kind of sorrow, then. Not even really for herself, anymore, but that Faith had known Joey’s kindness, and now she would be without it.

“I’ve always wanted a sister,” Faith continued after a moment, stopping their walk as they had looped back around and now the chapel was coming within sight. A swoon rattled around in her head again as a waft of Faith's perfume smothered her. “You know? Brothers are nice, but—”

Elliot felt a pleasant, dreamy buzzing in her head, and she thought it might have been from the words because— _because,_ and that was all her brain could think to supply as the thoughts flickered around in her head. _Because_ Faith wrapped her arms around Elliot’s midsection and hugged her, head tucked just under her chin, _because_ the young woman felt so tiny and small and frail in her arms, _because_ there was nothing about what she said that came with the same boxed, off-brand sincerity that the rest of her brothers used.

“I’m so happy you came, Elliot,” she murmured, her voice floating up to her muffled by the fabric of her sweater. She was holding so tight that Elliot could feel the rabbit-like fluttering of her own heartbeat in comparison to the slow, luxurious tempo of Faith’s. “I’ve felt really alone out here.”

When she tried to lift her arms, cautiously, it felt like she was moving underwater; she rested her hands on the blonde’s shoulders. “Faith,” she started, “if you—if you’re—unhappy—”

 _I can get you out too,_ she thought, a little desperately. _I can get you out. I couldn’t do it for Joey, but for you, I could._

“What do you mean?” The young woman smiled up at her, and their noses brushed, and that _scent_ washed over her again. What was it from? She couldn’t quite muddle through her brain to catch it and pin it down. “I’m _so_ happy. Now that _you’re_ here.”

“M-Me too,” Elliot managed out. She thought, vaguely, that something must be wrong; before she could trouble herself with it anymore, Faith reached up and kissed her cheek, and then the corner of her mouth, chastely. A burst of floral raced through her mouth, humming between her molars.

“Are you?” Faith asked her as the world wobbled a bit around her. “Happy, Elliot?”

Was she? When she reached around inside of her, dug around deep, she had anticipated finding that sharp little jumble of glass inside of her, all of the anger and the hurt that had been wadded up and sat right locked away in her jaw: but it was nowhere to be found, then. In that moment, all she felt was a gorgeous swoon of delight race straight through her at the idea that she could still be _happy._

“Yeah,” she said after a moment, feeling a little smile tugging at her lips. “I am.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

“So,” John said casually, “are you going to tell me what Elliot said to you?”

“Oh, fucking Christ,” Jacob muttered.

“John, you know that I can’t.” Joseph’s voice was mild, and patient, as he gathered his things from the table and came to a stand. “She confessed to me in absolute confidence. I could never violate that.”

“It’s _important,”_ John replied, shooting Jacob a look when he scoffed, “to make sure that I have as much information as I can.”

As they walked toward the chapel’s doors that led out into the main yard, Joseph rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, rooting him to his spot for a moment. It was just a tiny gesture, but that alone was enough to make John hesitate, glancing over at his older brother.

“Everything that you need to know about our deputy,” Joseph said, “you do. The only advice I can offer you is that she’s already told you what she wants, more than anything.”

“Don’t,” John sighed, “ _please_ don’t be cryptic with me. I don’t know—”

“You do,” his brother cautioned. “You do know, John. She’s just a woman, you know. She wants what anyone wants.” He gestured for him to move forward, and he did, albeit reluctantly, and Joseph opened the door to the outside. “A place to belong. A person to belong to, or a person to belong to them.” He paused. “A _home.”_

“John!”

As he stepped out of the chapel, Faith’s voice dragged his gaze to the small little space between the chapel and the building next to it. His sister waved at him with one hand while the other clasped Elliot’s tugging her along.

“We wondered how long you guys were going to be,” she said, beaming at him as they neared, Jacob and Joseph trailing after him out of the chapel. Joseph got as far as the doorway, leaning against it comfortably. Elliot’s face was flushed prettily, and yes, he could see it—the ever-so-gentle dilation of her pupils, a strange dragging smoothness to her movements, like each lift of her arm or flicker of her eyes was being done in a syrupy pool of molasses.

“It wasn’t too long, was it?” he prompted amusedly. “Only an hour and a half, I think.”

 _“Boring,”_ Faith insisted. “Elliot and I had so much fun. She knows so much about the plants around here, did you know?”

The sentence almost made John laugh. Faith knew just about as much as anyone could be around the plants in the area; he knew that she was _capable_ of this kind of sweet manipulation, but to see it in action, to see the way that Elliot’s nose crinkled at the compliment, was different.

“Not,” Elliot managed out modestly, “that much.”

Joseph said something to beckon Faith; John couldn’t hear it, or if he did, the sound didn’t filter into his mental archives, because Elliot was gazing at him with something _other_ than venom, and when their eyes met she waited a heartbeat too long to look away.

“I think I’m— gonna go lay down,” she said after a moment. “Thanks for talking with me, Faith.”

“I told you,” Faith replied sweetly from the doorway of the chapel, “I’m _so_ happy you’re here.” And she swiped her thumb along her lower lip, like the dredges of a sweet-drink she didn’t want to forget, and John felt like he’d missed something important.

As Jacob brushed past him with one last meaningful look over his shoulder, John cleared his throat and asked, “Are you feeling alright?” just as Elliot caught herself from swaying on her feet.

“Me?” she repeated, and as she took a step forward it seemed to hit her _really_ hard then, her hand flying out to stabilize herself with his shoulder. “I’m good. I’m pretty good, you know?”

“I don’t,” John replied. He reached up, brushing the hair from her face, and for a moment her eyes fluttered and she sighed. “Tell me.”

“Got food.”

“Mhm.”

“Got sleep.”

“Right.” John nudged her forward, walking her towards the bunkhouse.

“Got—” She paused, almost like she felt suddenly shy, opening the door and stepping inside. She looked at him over her shoulder, a little smile tugging at her lips. “ _You._ Don’t I, John?”

He thought very suddenly that he had been a fool to doubt Faith’s capabilities. A fool, certainly, and an even greater one to not have taken advantage of this sooner. Of course dunking her in a river bleeding Bliss had made her feel like shit. It was meant to disorient her. But _this_ Elliot? Gently, sweetly catered into a Bliss-buzzed reality?

“Yes,” he replied as her arms slipped around his neck. “You do.”

“Smell good.” Elliot nuzzled her face into his neck. _She_ smelled like Bliss extract—like she’d taken a bath in it—and when she leaned up and kissed him leisurely, unhurriedly, she _tasted_ like it too. It vibrated in his mouth, sharp and glittering and racing straight down his spine. “You left too many marks on me. It’s hard to cover up.”

“I’m sorry,” John said, even though he wasn’t sorry at all.

“You’re not.” She grinned against his mouth. “But you _will_ be.”

The words sent an excited little thrill through him, anticipation prickling along the back of his neck. But he needed to stay focused; he needed to remember why Faith had done this for them in the first place. _Not_ to get Elliot relaxed enough to actually enjoy herself, but to secure at least one aspect of their future that they could get their hands on.

He said, a half-cocked grin on his face, “Is that so?” while Elliot nudged him to one of the chairs settled snug and comfortable in the corner of the bunkhouse. The table had been littered with her own belongings that she’d fetched from Fall’s End _—_ her bag of clothes and things from the house, the two crates worth of supplies she’d hauled from the Spread Eagle. As soon as he was sitting in the chair obediently, she settled in his lap.

“Hey, El,” John said against her mouth, “what if we did something?”

“Kissing is something,” Elliot replied pleasantly.

“I mean,” he tried again, skimming his hands up underneath her sweater and down her back, “what if—we got—what the fuck is this?”

His hands hit lukewarm metal. He gripped it tentatively, feeling familiar ridges and lines, and pulled it out from where it had been tucked beneath the top lip of her jeans. 

It was a _gun._

In hindsight, John realized that it would have been stupid to think that she hadn’t grabbed weapons while they were in Fall’s End—she obviously didn’t think they’d give her any, and she was probably more right about it—but the absurdity of actually catching her with one _on_ her was almost too much, in juxtaposition to the innocent way she was regarding him.

“A gun,” she said.

“I can see that,” John replied amusedly, making sure the safety was switched on before he set the gun on the table. “Care to elaborate?”

Elliot shrugged. The black of her pupils slowly ate away at the blue of her irises, until he thought that there could only be a sliver of them left now. “Not really.” And then she kissed him again, instantly pulling his mind away from the task at hand as well as the careful procurement of her firearm.

“You wanted to be—armed, walking around with my sister?” John rumbled against her mouth.

“Not getting caught unarmed,” Elliot replied. “Not again.” And she threaded her fingers through his hair and kissed him, sighing into the liplock prettily and reminding him, again, why he was actually here.

John waited until he could feel the flutter of her pulse under his fingers before he said, “What if we got married?”

Elliot laughed. “Don’t be stupid,” she murmured, while his fingers traced the bruise he’d left the night before. 

“I’m not.” He kissed her again, distracting her for a moment. “What if we did?”

The blonde stilled and pulled back, regarding him with a gaze that was both unimpressed and confused. She didn’t say anything, and _he_ didn’t say anything, and she pressed her lips into a thin line.

“Why?” she asked suspiciously. But John had been prepared for this question, because he knew it would come inevitably, and he leaned forward and tugged her down to kiss her again; her movements were more tentative now, as though she were trying to brace herself against him.

“I don’t want,” John said against her kiss, “you to be alone anymore.”

“Um,” said Elliot, sounding faint.

“And when this is all done with,” he continued quickly, “all of this stuff with—with the cult, you and I can get out of here.”

She stared at him. He could almost hear the sluggish churning of her mental gears, grinding and lurching against each other. In the time that he’d known Elliot, he’d come to understand that there were two things that she cared about: getting her friend, and getting out. And it was easy to promise both; by the time they got to the end of the line, it was time to make a decision about staying or leaving, Elliot would be so won over by him that she’d choose to stay.

_What does anyone want?_

“But what about…” She swallowed thickly and gestured with her hand. “What about—like—all the others—”

_A person to belong to them._

“I want to be with you,” John said, low and easy. “I want to be yours, El.”

Her lashes fluttered uneasily. “John—”

“I want a home.” He studied her face. “With you.”

 _Come on,_ he thought as she worked the words through her Bliss-muddled brain. _Come on, hellcat, come on, I know you want to._

“If you—I bet if you agree to testify,” she started, “then Burke could—”

“Cutting a deal only works if _you_ can choose not to testify against me,” John told her. “You know that, El.”

She didn’t; she was only a small-town deputy, but it didn’t matter. She nodded like she did. She was a small-town deputy with nothing and no-one left, and now he was offering her what he thought she wanted the most: something. Someone.

“You said there was a John that you wanted,” he continued. He kissed her, his hand cradling the back of her head, and he felt her fingers fist the front of his shirt like she was afraid of disappearing. “I’m here.”

Voice barely above a whisper, she said, “Okay.”

John nosed past her hair, kissing the slope of her jawbone. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Elliot repeated. “I’m—yeah, I want—I want you to be… If you’ll go, when this is done—if you’ll cut a deal with Burke, and—”

A moment passed where she couldn’t seem to bring herself to say exactly what she meant. So he waited, and let her muddle through it, mouth twisting for a moment. _A person to belong to,_ Joseph had said; he felt the absent fluttering of her pulse under his mouth. _A person to belong to them._

“Then I want you,” she managed hazily, “to be mine.”

 _Mine._ The word echoed pleasantly, over and over again, in his own voice. _Mine. All mine._

“Of course,” John murmured against her skin, “all yours.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Evening came, and with it, a plethora of new problems: chief among them, sober Elliot.

That is to say, though John had hurried from the bunkhouse and fetched the marriage certificate Joseph had figured up for him, and though he had made it back in time for Elliot to dimly sign it, she was nearly asleep. Which left the question up in the air as to whether or not Elliot would even _remember_ their conversation, or if it would feel like a strange dream to her, and if it did, what was he going to do? Tell her?

By the time she’d slept off her happy little trip, John had filed the certificate away for safe-keeping, and _she'd_ come barging into the chapel.

“Hey,” he greeted her, noting the sharpness of her eyes, the way she cocked her head and rolled her shoulders. “Get some sleep?”

“Yeah,” Elliot replied, her voice coming out a little hoarse from the sleep. “What happened? I was so tired, I can barely remember leaving Faith.”

Jacob looked at John pointedly, his brain rapidly scrambling for a foothold. Now, in the face of Elliot-not-under-the-influence, he had the distinct feeling that his assumption she would not be pleased at the idea of being a Seed felt truer than ever.

He _should_ tell her. He _should._ He should tell her what they’d agreed to, that she’d signed a marriage certificate to be “witnessed” by Joseph and Jacob and Faith, that she’d said she wanted him to be hers. If he trusted her, he would.

“Nothing,” John said lightly. “You came back from your walk with Faith, said you were tired and wanted to go lay down. You look pretty flushed, though.” He feigned concern, reaching up to touch her forehead. “Are you running a fever again?”

Elliot jerked back, startled by the gesture, as though the display of affection in front of Jacob was a shock to her. Trying to look as though she hadn’t just acted like a cornered animal, she said, “I’m—no, I feel fine otherwise.”

“Okay,” he replied. “Well—”

“Faith said you guys were having a meeting earlier,” the blonde continued. “About what to do with the Family. I need to be in on those meetings.”

Jacob scoffed. “I don’t think so.”

“ _I’m_ going to kill Kian,” she asserted firmly. “So I need to know what he’s up to.”

The two of them exchanged a glance for a moment. John said, “Elliot, are you sure you don’t—”

“Positive.”

“Well, sit down,” Jacob snapped. “Not gonna wait all fucking day for you.”

Relief immediately crossed her face. It was so potent in that moment that she didn’t even seem to have the heart to bite out a retort—Jacob’s venom meant nothing to her, not if she was getting what she wanted. Elliot sat herself down at the table and leaned over the map, stifling a yawn.

Jacob covered all of the information that he already had with John and Joseph in their own, which was just fine; John didn’t need to hear about how they’d dug up Ase Carnell, daughter of a Swedish hedge fund king who’d inherited her daddy’s _billions_ upon his departure from his mortal coil. He didn’t need to hear about that, because _instead_ , he could think about the way Elliot had said, _I want you to be mine._ How sweet she would be when she’d settled into being his wife, too; how _delicious_ she would sound saying, _come here, husband._

He was halfway through a daydream when Elliot broke him out of his thoughts. “Did we find out anything about them?” she asked.

“ _We_ ,” Jacob said, pointing at himself alone, “found out that they’re no longer holed up at the camp, but they’re on the move. Like they’re heading out of town. Somehow, these people are well-funded, well-equipped, and they have nothing but time on their hands.”

“Ase told us that the end of the world was coming,” John clarified, “and that it was their job to help usher it in.”

“Well.” Jacob grimaced. “We can’t let them get out. We should choke them here on their way out of Hope County.”

“Do you think Kian’s there still?” Elliot asked. “After what he did to Joey, I—I have to think he’s really pissed off.”

“There weren’t any stragglers,” Jacob replied, “the camp was completely empty, and we haven’t seen anyone out on their own.”

“Then I’ll go cut them off.”

Jacob barked out a laugh, and when Elliot regarded him with an even, unflinching gaze, he crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re fucking _joking.”_

“I have guns,” Elliot insisted. “I can drive in a firefight better than any of you fuckheads. Just ask John.”

“Yeah, he told me about your little stunt. You almost killed Faith.”

“But I _didn’t,”_ Elliot insisted, “ _and_ I got valuable information, which was that they weren’t willing to kill her even if it meant killing us, so you’re welcome, you fuckhead!”

“Go fuck yourself,” Jacob bit out.

“Okay,” John interjected just as Elliot opened her mouth, “what if I went too?”

It wasn’t _ideal._ He didn’t really _want_ to go on a happy little road trip to try and corner a murderous cult, he _wanted_ to just let them fuck off and never come back, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that they had egregiously affected Elliot, and he had promised her, and if he went back on that promise now, the tentative peace they had come to would disappear instantly.

Whether she remembered the marriage or not.

His eldest brother stared at him for a long minute. John half-expected him to say no; after all, the whole point was to make sure they didn’t die, Elliot included, so that they could use her if something went awry after the Family was dealt with.

“Fine,” Jacob said after a moment.

“No!” Elliot protested instantly. “Fuck, God, no, I don’t—need a fucking babysitter.”

“On the contrary, I don’t know how you’ve survived this long without one,” Jacob replied. “John goes with you to choke them, or _I_ go with you.”

Elliot’s mouth twisted in a vicious grimace. She tapped her thumbnail against her lower lip for a moment, her gaze sliding to him; their eyes lingered just a bit longer than normal, and for a second he thought she knew something that she wasn’t telling him.

“I’d rather drill out my own cavities than go with you,” Elliot said to Jacob after a minute.

“Great,” he said flippantly, “so you and John can have a nice little road trip down the highway—”

“Cool.”

“—and we’ll pin them in from the back. We’ve got enough explosives to light up the entire gaggle of them, but _only_ once, so you’d better make it fucking count. Got it?”

Something was clearly brewing. It unsettled John, the way that she regarded him with a fixed, unreadable gaze. It struck John that Elliot hadn’t, in the last few days, mentioned anything about her plan, or her next move. It was the first time that he was not _acutely_ aware of her intentions beyond revenge for Hudson.

 _What’s going on in that head of yours?_ He wondered. _What’s storming around in there?_

“Got it,” Elliot replied, at length. “So when do we leave?”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Elliot stood by idly while Joseph went about his work. His “work” being speaking in low murmurs to John and Jacob, hands on both of their shoulders, heads bowed together as he took them through what was certainly some kind of horrific disfigurement of a prayer.

Joseph had been pleased when she’d told him about that night in her apartment. He’d looked elated, to know the nitty-gritty details of her worst nightmare; of her then-boyfriend terrorizing her, for weeks, before breaking into her apartment. He’d been _thrilled._ He’d cradled her face and said, _Don’t worry, Elliot. You’re safe now._

She had to bite back a laugh. _Safe_ , like that meant anything to her anymore. Her apartment had been _safe._ Joey had been _safe._ And what had that gotten her?

Alone.

Alone, and with strange, broken moments of time. John had said that she’d gone straight to sleep, but if that was the case, she’d had uncomfortable dreams, too. Splintering fragments of what felt like a memory. John, kissing her, arms wrapped around her midsection: _I want to be yours. I want a home, with you._

It was too much of a fairytale to have been real, she knew—John would never. He’d said it himself; he’d do anything for his family, and that meant dying, and lying, and squirming his way into her bed, and fuck him for being that way. Maybe she wanted him in her bed, and fuck him for that, too.

Because he _had_ lied to her. Or at the very least, he hadn’t been entirely truthful with her. Elliot knew she’d taken her gun with her, and when she’d woken up, she’d seen it on the table.

“You’re not riding this time, bud,” she said to Boomer, the keys in her hand. “I don’t want you in the car if you don’t have to be.”

The Heeler gazed her, big brown eyes soft and trusting. His tail wagged softly in the dirt. If there was someone that was going to make it out of here, no matter what, she’d make sure it was Boomer.

“Elliot.” It was Faith’s voice. She had slipped up while the brothers spoke amongst themselves, smiling at her, small and tentative. 

“Hey, Faith,” Elliot greeted her, clearing her throat. A wad of anxiety rolled in her stomach at the sight of the blonde—something she wasn’t expecting, and that she couldn’t quite parse out. “What are you doing up so late? Or—early, I guess.”

“I wanted to see you off,” she replied sweetly. “You’re going to get that guy, right? The one that killed Hudson?”

She swallowed thickly. “Yeah.”

“Good.” The blonde sounded oddly determined. “I hope he suffers.”

A wave of affection washed over her. It was an unexpectedly kind thing to say. “Me too.”

The brothers finished their convening, and as they divided—John to her, Jacob to a group of Peggies, and Joseph beckoning Faith to follow him into the chapel—Elliot felt something settle right in her, just under her skin, and John glanced back over his shoulder before he reached up.

His fingers brushed her jaw. She didn’t recoil the same way she had before, but steeled herself against the instinct to do so; the two combating urges to both lean and pull away. But she stayed perfectly still, and when John leaned down, she tilted her chin up.

Their lips brushed. She wanted to linger in the moment, to enjoy it, but she couldn’t brush off the creeping knowledge that he hadn’t been honest with her.

“Aren’t you excited to go on a road trip with me?” John said, his voice low as he kissed her.

Elliot tilted her head just a little bit out of his grasp. “So I can hear you complain about my driving?”

“Mean.” He smiled against her mouth. “Cruel. Wicked.”

“Are you trying to compliment me into submission?” Elliot asked, and then he kissed her again—slower this time, more leisurely; _indulgent_ was the word he should have used for her, all things considered.

He looked at her for a moment, a little like he couldn’t get enough of her, and murmured, “Not into submission. Just complimenting for all the normal reasons.”

“Are you two leaving or what?” Jacob snapped from a few feet away. “We have time wasting.”

Elliot exhaled, sharp and tired, against John’s mouth, and he laughed, pulling away from her. He waved at Jacob before he walked around to the other side of the truck and climbed in; she hoisted herself into the driver’s side and rolled the window down and cranked the engine on. Everything she thought they might need had been loaded into the small space behind their seats—guns, ammo, what medical supplies she’d been able to take from Fall’s End, some food. She tapped a cigarette out of a carton she’d snagged and lit it.

“Really?” John asked, without heat, as she pulled the truck slowly away from the center of the yard.

“I’m tired,” Elliot replied, taking a drag of the cigarette. “If I _am_ still sick, it’s really sticking with me.”

John was quiet at that, glancing out the window as they pulled out of the compound, and she whistled out the window and Boomer took off to dart through the underbrush like an arrow; dark and sleek and lethal. She could see his eyes glinting in the headlights as she turned onto the road and hit pavement.

“You shouldn’t have had to come,” she said. 

“I would’ve wanted to, even if Jacob didn’t demand it.” John glanced over at her, and for a second she thought he looked almost sly as he continued, “You don’t have to do everything alone all the time, you know.”

_“Please don’t try and Atlas this thing, deputy.”_

Jerome’s voice clattered around in her, vibrating each time it connected with some surface of her memory; but she didn’t let herself feel them, didn’t let them wander into her conscience, because if she did she would have lost herself to the grief.

“I know,” Elliot said quietly, tapping the ash out the window. “It’s just hard. I don’t—I’m not—”

“A team player?” he prompted, reaching over and taking the cigarette out of her hand so that he could take a drag for himself. Before she could correct him on what she was going to say— _good at letting go_ —he snagged her free hand and in a surprising act of affection, brought it to his mouth to kiss her fingers.

“We’ll kill him, El,” John continued. He carried an easiness about him now that he hadn’t had before, like he was suddenly very relaxed despite the task at hand. “And then this whole nightmare will be over.”

The irony that _John Seed_ was assuring her that the nightmare would be finished was palpable, and certainly not lost on her. Even if it was endearing, the way that he snagged her hand and kissed her knuckles, the way that he smoked her cigarette down, like she could get a secondhand-decompression from it.

“Yeah,” she murmured, “I know, John.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

As soon as they hit the highway, the dark night sky stretching out above them, Elliot felt herself relax.

For the first time in a long time, she felt _still_ ; as though all of that vibrating, all of that suffering, had ended, even if it was only for a moment. Even if that meant that John Seed was a part of the quiet.

“Remember the last time you were driving us somewhere?” John prompted from the passenger seat, rolling the window up against the chill of the late evening. “You stole my sunglasses, you smoked in the car, and then you tried to drive us into an oncoming car. With my sister in it.”

“This sounds like a _lot_ of complaining for someone who’s still in one piece,” Elliot replied, hitting the cruise button on the truck and glancing out the window. She was going slower than normal, letting Boomer dart through the underbrush as he trailed them. He’d barely gotten half the amount of exercise he’d been used to since they’d been in the compound, so he was probably having the time of his little doggy life.

“I’m just saying, cruising at a cool twenty-five on an empty highway seems highly out of character for you.”

Elliot opened her mouth to say something, her head turning to look at John, but several things happened in very quick succession: Boomer barked, loud and sharp on her left, John leaned forward to look at him, and when John leaned, Elliot saw a dark, gray shape lurching its way from the far side of the road up onto the pavement.

Panic shot through her body. She slammed her foot on the gas, but it was too late; the van—and that’s what it was, _a van_ —was quicker on the uptake and slammed straight into the back end of the truck, sending it tires-squealing across the highway and straight into a tree. The sound of crunching metal and glass breaking rang in her ears as her body lurched with the movement, wrenching against the steering wheel with a force that knocked the wind right out of her.

She was aware, vaguely, of airbags weakly deploying. _Fucking Peggies,_ she thought through the haze of pain, fumbling with her seatbelt. And then her body kicked _again:_ _someone fucking hit us, fuck fuck fuck, oh shit oh fuck,_ her finger jamming uselessly on the mangled seatbelt clicker.

“John?” Elliot asked, as smoke billowed into the front of the car. The windshield was broken, and the engine sputtered dangerously.

“What—in the fuck—?” His voice was groggy, and through the smoke filling the cab of the truck and her own blurring vision she could see the dim shape of him moving.

The seatbelt finally released, and she fumbled blindly at John’s, ignoring the burning filling her lungs and stinging across her skin.

“John, we have to—John we have to fucking _move,”_ she said, and then she heard the door behind her swing open; frantically she pushed at John’s seatbelt, trying to scoot away from the noise instinctively, but the second she felt a hand gripping the back of her shirt in a fist, she could feel the dread wadding up in her stomach. 

Elliot wrenched her body hard, not bothering to look before she tried to kick whoever was grabbing at her. The hand gripping her sweater went harder, another wrapping around her calf.

And then yanked. _Hard._

There was no collision of body; no one was trying to _catch_ her out of the truck, but just haul her out, tossing her like a rag doll onto the hard ground beside the road. It was the second time in as many minutes where the wind was ripped straight out of her, and she coughed, struggling to sit up.

A booted foot planted itself on her shoulder and pressed her back into the ground.

“Sit back, _mor,”_ an unfortunately familiar red-head cooed, digging his foot into her shoulder until she squirmed. “Relax.”

“Fuck—yourself,” Elliot ground out, wrapping her free arm around the offending leg to try and get some leverage to pull herself out from under him. But Kian easily breezed past six feet tall, and probably weighed twice as much as her. He grabbed the hand gripping his knee with a kind of bruising force and twisted until she couldn’t bite back the cry of pain.

She could hear the sounds of voices on the other side of the truck, the sound of a car pulling up next to the wreckage, and Boomer barking furiously. 

_John,_ she thought hazily, _they’re grabbing him, and Boomer. I have to fucking—I have to get up, I have move, fucking move you useless fucking body._

“Did you get my gift?” Kian asked her, lifting his foot so he could haul her to her feet. _Get out get out get out_ her brain was screaming when his free hand gripped her throat the same way it had done before. “Did you like it, _mor?_ Picked out every flower myself and stuffed each one in. Her _eyes_ —”

Elliot tried to throw her body weight one way, but to no avail; the images were already flooding over her. Joey, packed full of flowers. Joey, blooming from every part of her.

“—her _mouth_ —”

“Stop,” Elliot begged, her voice coming out hoarse, grating on each sensitive part of her soul on its way out. “Don’t talk about her—”

“—her ribs and chest, those were the _best_ parts to fill up,” Kian seethed. “Broke every one of her pretty little ribs and yanked them right out. Could not waste any space, could we, _mor?”_

He spat the moniker at her with venom. Where Ase had said it to her reverently, with adoration, caressing her with the single-syllable, he bit it out of his mouth: he sank his teeth into it, brimming with hatred.

Her vision fuzzed around the edges, and Kian dug his fingers into the soft skin of her throat. “Ase—said,” Elliot managed out, one last-ditch attempt at survival, “she said she was—she was waiting for me—”

Kian hauled her against the truck, all but throwing her against the dented and splintering metal as the smell of burning rubber filled the air. Every inch of her body was _screaming_ , straining and aching, desperate for some kind of relief from the constant onslaught of pain.

“Ase,” Kian hissed out against her temple, so low that she almost couldn’t hear him, “is _dead._ Your man _killed_ her. Or don’t you remember?”

Elliot wheezed. She did, but his grip on her throat was so tight that she thought she was going to pass out; there was no room to answer even if she thought that Kian wanted to hear it.

“We’re going to have fun, little one.” He punctuated each word as hard as he could, punching it out of his mouth. “We’re going to see how fast you can run. You and that man of yours. Did you know, _mor_ —”

His fingers loosened on her throat, brushing over what she was _sure_ was a bruise from John her neck, almost admiring. The sensation sent unpleasant goosebumps prickling along her spine. 

“—that I have intimate knowledge of the human body?” he finished. “So much time digging around in one, you start to figure out how to make someone’s life end quickly—or make them die a long and _suffering_ death.” He smiled, the gesture out of place on his face; in another life, in another world, Kian would have been handsome, but in this lifetime the expression on him only looked jagged and sharp. Like it didn’t quite fit into his skin.

Elliot gathered up whatever strength she had left and spit in his face.

She hadn’t realized her mouth was full of blood, but in hindsight, it wasn’t surprising; watching the crimson splatter Kian’s face was more a happy little treat, albeit short-lived.

“You ugly fuckhead,” she gritted out as he wiped the blood from his face. “I’m pretty good at making sure people suffer, too, let me go first and we can—s-swap notes—”

Too late, she realized that Kian was banking on her mouthing off; he fished something out of his pocket and then shoved it into her mouth. It was a wet washcloth, the taste of it earthy and reminiscent of the lingering taste that had been in her mouth when she’d woken up at the camp before. She tried desperately to spit it out, but her jaw worked tiredly, exhausted.

“Much better,” he said. “I’ll tell you what: I see your color too, _mor,_ and do you know what I see? Not white, not perfect balance like Ase said. You are _gray._ Oh.” He clicked his tongue, gripping her neck to pull her forward and then slam her back against the truck again, sending her vision spinning. “So sad, aren’t you? Don’t worry. You’ll _bloom_ for me.”

Kian beamed at her, almost boyish, holding her with his vice-like grip.

“They always do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr @proudspires participating in as many shenanigans as you can imagine : )


	16. that colossal wreck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!  
> Nothing beside remains. Round the decay  
> Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare  
> The lone and level sands stretch far away.”  
> —Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I so hope y'all enjoy this chapter. I'm not gonna say too much about it here, but please know that every comment, like, kudos, whatever—even the tiniest bit of knowledge that y'all enjoyed it just makes me so incredibly happy. It was a bit of slog at some parts but I'm so excited to get it out for you. <3 Special shout-out to @starcrier who provides incredible input and support while I try and glean even a MODICUM of her talent; ilysm!!!
> 
> As well, @baeogorath has been such an absolute DARLING, allows me to send them memes at like 3am and scream at them about all of my feelings. And @lilwritingraven, who has been SO supportive and helpful and just all around the biggest sweetheart a gal could ask for, thank you BOTH sm. <3
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: blood and guts, mentions of self-harm, mentions of sexual assault, Kian is a creepy fucker and he needs to die so he gets his own warning, dog on man violence. Uhhhhh idk how shotguns work so I did my best, don't @ me. Elliot does go full feral in this and I'm not sorry.

The first thing that she recognized was the desperate need to breathe. 

The second was that she was wet, exceptionally wet, her lungs filling with water over and over again, like dying a thousand times without the actual reprieve of death. Two strong hands gripped the front of her shirt, pinning her under the dark surface. Elliot thought,  _ I’ve been here before. _

Those hands gripping her hauled her out of the dark, wheezing and coughing up water, and tossed her onto the riverbank like a dead fish. She might as well have been, for what it was worth; when she managed to open her eyes, the world blurred and melted around her the way water swept over a window in a carwash.

“So glad you are awake,” Kian said from in front of her. He stood in the water just past his knees, and as he made his way out and over to her, she blinked rapidly to try and clear her vision. Elliot sucked in the biggest lungful of air she could, and all of the water that had been sitting in her mouth and throat caught and ripped, forcing her to lean and choke it up. “You were sleeping for quite a while, you know, Elliot. Had to make sure you slept all of it off.”

Her name coming out of his mouth felt like a violation—sticky, wet,  _ ruined, _ a thing she had not allowed him to use, and yet he did anyway. She hadn’t given him permission to  _ know _ her, and it felt different still than when Ase had used her name; like a weapon being wielded against her.

_ They gave me so much, _ she thought desperately a while her body thrummed with pain, searing hot through every nerve-ending as if they’d all been rubbed raw and exposed.  _ They gave me so much of that shit, so much more than Ase ever did. How long was I sleeping it off? Fuck fuck fuck. _

Kian’s fingers gripped her throat, slotted just under her jaw, and he  _ pulled _ _;_ hauled her straight up with brute strength until her bare feet— _ when _ had they taken her shoes?—scrambled against the slippery river bank.

“Her dress fits you well,” he continued admiringly as he held her there. His words dragged her attention back to herself; she wasn’t in her own clothes, in fact, but in a long, dark cotton dress, high-necked and slim fitting. It looked like the same dress that she had first seen Ase in. “In fact, if your hair was just a little darker, and your eyes not so fucking blue, I would think you two could be sisters.”

_ Dead, _ the wind whispered. Humidity crept under the fabric, stifling and tenacious.  _ Dead woman in a dead woman’s clothes. _

“W-Where—?” Elliot managed out hoarsely. Her own heartbeat, so loud that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hear Kian, thrummed violently in her ears as panic started to really settle into her skeleton. “Where—John, and Boomer—what the f-fuck did you—”

“Now that you’re awake,” Kian continued conversationally, as though she had not spoken at all, “we can start.”

His grip loosened and then released. She barely managed to keep herself upright. The world lurched dangerously beneath her feet, and for a second, she  _ thought _ she was going to have to throw up; the sensation subsided, and she swept her gaze in a single circle around her.

No John; no Boomer. Only darkly-clothed, silent figures, watching. Each face—some as old as a grandparent, some as young as what she thought could only be ten, and many of them somewhere in between—regarded her with the same kind of glassy-eyed curiosity that came with a circus attraction.

“What the fuck,” Elliot said, her voice hoarse and cracking in distress. “What the fuck did you—where  _ are _ they—?”

“I’m only going to give you one tip,” Kian said. “Stop trying so hard to talk. You’ll burn through all of your adrenaline,  _ mor.” _

He had passed her up the riverbank. The intent of it all was very clear: he anticipated that she would follow, because he had something that she wanted and she was in no state to claw her way through all of them even if she wanted to. The knowledge of this—the understanding that Kian knew exactly what hand he had, and was going to play it—filled her with another sickening wash of dread.

The redhead stopped at the top of the bank and looked at her over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”

Shivering, Elliot wadded the hem of the dark dress up in one hand and struggled to the bank. Kian let her. He let her catch herself, dirtying her hands and the dress, practically clawing her way up as her heart rate fluctuated earnestly and without pattern in her chest, and when she made it to where he stood she could see the treeline ahead of them. Dark, drenched in nightfall, the pines murmuring every time the night’s chilly breeze rustled the branches.

“They’ll—” Talking caused pain to splinter through her jaw, radiating in spiderwebs up behind her eyes. “His b-brothers will—”

Kian waved a hand. His voice was light when he said, “They are busy.”

_ Fuck.  _ Despair welled in her chest. Elliot swallowed thickly and said, “What are... What are we...”

He stared at her. She had the distinct sensation of being an ant, trapped under the searing beam of his magnifying glass, raising burns all across her skin. Then, he reached down to the ground, and from a bag, he procured a handful of papers; when he pulled them out, the familiar scent of  _ her home _ wafted from them.

“You have lovely handwriting.” He scanned the page. “I hope you’ll forgive my snooping through your home. I couldn’t resist. Let’s see here: sounds like our little bunny was struggling with insomnia, feeling alone. Angry with your therapist for saying you were displaying—” Kian lifted a finger to indicate the importance of the word. “— _ significant _ signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, including—”

“S—” _I want to die I want to die._ The pages of her ripped journal sat in his hands, even greater a violation than the sound of her name coming out of his mouth. “Stop—”

“—intrusive memories, loss of time, irritability and aggressive behavior, self-harm. Is that where those scars are from? Hm, and… 'Sometimes, I wonder what it would have been like if I didn’t let this happen to me'. Is that  _ guilt _ ?” Kian clicked his tongue. “Do you feel guilty, Elliot? For what that man did to you, those years ago?” And then he paused, glanced back at the paper, and said, “Forgive me. It was one year ago. Not that far gone, I suppose.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out; something gripped her lungs, restricted their movement, until she thought she was going to pass out.

He had been in her home. He had touched her things. He’d stood among the things that were meant to be hers, rifled through them, found her journal and ripped the pages out. She’d taken up journaling about what had happened—not to torture herself with the reality of her situation, but in an effort to understand who she had become, to feel less like a stranger in her own body.

And now he held it in his hands, and there it was: everything that she was, just that small, just that insignificant. The entirety of what she was clutched in the hands of a psychopath.

“I hope she’s fucking suffering.” Elliot ground the words out, and Kian quirked a brow at her inquisitively. She plunged onward, reckless and vicious from her pain, “I hope Ase’s fucking rotting in hell, suffering, and I’m  _ glad _ they blew her fucking brains in.”

Something dark flickered across Kian’s expression. It may have been a trick of the light; the clouds passed over the moon, blinking the world into darkness for a few minutes before the nighttime wind pushed them forward again. Elliot couldn’t tell if it was real, what she’d seen on his face, but she hoped it was.

But he didn’t say anything about her venom. Instead, he said, “Ase and I used to play a game together.” His tone was light, casual; he dropped the papers back into the bag dismissively, as if they were nothing. “I would give her a three-minute head start. She would run into the woods, and I would try to catch her. She was the perfect prize.”

A strange kind of affection welled in his voice. It was  _ love, _ Elliot thought with a sickening kind of realization, in his voice—and it only made her more grateful that John had busted through her spine with a shotgun shell, the knowledge that maybe Kian was suffering even a tiny bit as much as she was.

Kian continued, “Now, because of you, she is not here to play the game;  _ you _ will have to be my prize, Elliot.”

She was going to be sick. She wished that he would have just killed her, rather than this—this waking nightmare, this actual fucking living hell he was going to put her through. Elliot sucked in an unsteady breath, and when Kian gestured at the treeline, she turned her gaze there. It was easier to look at the sturdy line of pines than at his wretched face.

Hot breath fanned across her ear. Kian’s hand came up to the back of her neck, holding,  _ gripping, _ the way a father would when he prepped his son for a baseball game. She heard the words like a sick comedy in her head:  _ Come on, champ! You’ve got it! _ But his mouth was right on her ear and he said, “I hid your man out there for you.”

_ John. _

“He’s—not,” she managed out. “Mine.”

Kian huffed out a laugh against her temple. “Then it should be easy for you to hide from me and not worry about finding him.”

Bluff called. Fucking cultist.

He stepped away from her, heading to the half-moon curve of cultists waiting idly by. Silently, Elliot tried to count them; she wanted to know how many she could kill, and how fast, if she got a gun in her hands, but the splitting headache blurring her vision uneasily made it difficult to keep track.

One of them put a shotgun in Kian’s hand. He checked the ammunition idly.

“Start running, Elliot,” he called without looking at her. “Your time starts now.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

“What took you so long?”

John thought he had to be dreaming. He was certain of it, somewhere in his brain, because Elliot’s voice hummed warmly against the skin of his neck and she pressed up against him like a feline eager for his attention, and that wasn’t her. Was it?

“You’ve been sleeping so long,” she murmured into him, all sleep-warmed skin and soft lines. “Aren’t you going to wake up?”

_ Yes, _ he thought, because he wanted to open his eyes, because he wanted to see her like this. He’d worked hard for it. He deserved it, didn’t he?  _ Yes, I’m going to wake up. _

“John.” Elliot purred his name, sweet and decadent. She was so warm. “Wake up.”

“Okay,” John said, because he knew that he was ready. But the world stayed dark. He tried again: “Okay, I will.”

Her lips brushed against his pulse. He felt her fingers trace the Sloth scar on his sternum, meticulous, memorizing, slender and warm and affectionate.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“I trust you,” he managed out, “I trust you.”

Like lifting the floodgates, he pushed his eyes open. And it  _ was _ a push; the effort it took to open his eyes was astronomical, like someone had suddenly stuck him under slow-moving lava that swallowed him up, ate away at the oxygen around him and weighed down his lungs in their attempt to let him breathe.

There was no Elliot. Only the slow, dark pulsing of pine boughs overhead. For just one split second, John felt relief; he was fine. Somewhere, but fine.

And then a piece of the sky lifted and peeled, drifting away. The trees bent and warped around him. He tried to struggle to sit up, fighting the urge to coil up into a tiny ball.

He said, miserably, “What the fuck,” and something at his hip buzzed static. The sound sent jolts of white-hot panic searing through his body.

_ “Hello?” _ It was a radio. A thick, dark voice came through. John didn’t pick up. He thought it sounded like Kian.

“Fucker,” he managed out, hauling himself to his feet as the world see-sawed beneath him.

_ “John Seed.” _ The voice came again.  _ “I know you can hear me. You should be waking up any minute now.” _

John wished he was still asleep. The dream had been better than this. At least in that, Elliot was—

_ Elliot. _ The last thing he remembered was her frantic hands trying to undo his seatbelt, and then her warmth getting ripped away from him, and then someone's hands on his shirt and—

“Fuck.” Bad news. Bad. “Fuck fuck  _ fuck. _ ”

Steadying himself on a boulder, he came around into the clearing, trying to see through the trees. It was no good; the world pulsed and bled around him, smearing like an oil painting, and he realized with a sense of dread pitting in his stomach that they’d drugged him.  _ Hard. _ The same way they’d drugged Elliot when she’d been crying into the ground like she was going to fly off.

That he knew what was going on did little to abate the irrational panic flashing through him, electrical pulses pounding through his body every chance they got. It made everything  _ too much _ —the sound of the wind, the murmuring of voices that he thought maybe weren’t there, the feeling of the night on his skin. Yes, he  _ felt _ it, like a garment of clothing, sitting just on him; he couldn’t tell where he ended and the rest of it began. 

_ “I let your beast loose,” _ Kian’s voice crackled, seething with delight.  _ “Gave her a head start, too.” _

His fingers itched to grab the radio that had been clipped on his belt. He thought,  _ I shouldn’t let him know I’m awake _ —

“Hey, fucker,” he snapped, his finger pushing down on the walkie button. His words kept slurring on their way out of his mouth, but he plunged onward anyway. “Come out here, huh? Love to chat face to face.”

Well, he’d never been that good at impulse control, anyway.

_ “On my way already,”  _ Kian murmured silkily.  _ “See you soon, friend.” _

And then it went dead.

John spent what felt like an eternity staring at the face of the walkie talkie before he thought,  _ Hey, that’s my fucking radio. _ And then:  _ fuck, I can’t fight him right now. _

He blinked furiously, trying to refocus his vision as bright colors started to bloom and bleed out from the ground. John kept telling himself that it wasn’t real, that there was no way it was real—and then he understood Elliot’s  _ very _ real fear that night he’d tried to pull her down the hill. What had she seen then, he wondered? What had she been looking at?

“John?”

He hesitated, because the last time he’d heard Elliot’s voice it had been a dream. John’s base instinct was to stand very still,  _ exceptionally _ still, which didn’t feel very still at all because he was drugged up through his fucking eyeballs and he wanted to puke.

“John—”

When she broke into the clearing, Elliot’s voice was frantic. Her hair had been let loose around her face and she was wearing a dress and bolting barefoot through the woods.  _ Oh,  _ John thought, a little panicked,  _ oh, I’m dreaming again. _

“Fuck,” Elliot said, her voice breaking. Her hands fluttered aimlessly, like she couldn’t figure out a place for them to land. “You don’t have Boomer?”

Maybe not dreaming, after all.

“Sleeping,” John replied, intelligently. “I was—”

Elliot stared at him as she drew closer, her eyes razor-sharp and clear and quick. The sliced right down to the core of him, but what was new, anyway?  _ Stupid deputy,  _ his brain chanted, sluggishly.  _ Stupid, pretty, dumb deputy. _

“... drug you?”

John blinked owlishly at her. He wasn’t in very much pain, which was good, but it probably was all going to hit him when the drug wore off and it was harder and harder to keep his attention focused; it was getting to the point where it was like being  _ very drunk _ , where keeping his eyes open was becoming more and more of a chore.

Elliot snapped her fingers in front of his face. “John, focus.”

“Whose dress?” he managed out, gesturing at her.

Her eyes flickered uneasily. “Dunno.” She brought her fingers to her lips and whistled, high and fast, and John groaned; the sound rattled around in his head, echoing over and over again, splintering behind his eyes.

_ “Why?” _ he hissed. “Why are you—”

“Shut up, you fucking baby.” 

Yeah, definitely not a dream.

They stood there in quiet for a moment, waiting; in the distance, John could hear a faint barking.

“He’s out there,” Elliot said, relieved. “They probably have him tied up, if they were able to get their hands on him. John—”

The blonde stopped suddenly, and he turned his gaze back to her inquisitively. She looked very much like she wanted to say something; her lashes flickered uneasily and she swallowed thickly.

“You have to get him, John,” she said finally, which didn’t sound like the thing she wanted to say.

“I’ve got a radio,” he supplied helpfully; on instinct, he reached for her, and she didn’t flinch back when his hand found the juncture between her neck and shoulder.  _ Warm, _ he thought pleasantly, hazily, the breath spilling out of his lungs like a waterfall. “It’s the one from the ranch. We can—radio Joseph and the others.”

“John, I need you to listen to me,” Elliot began, reaching up to put her hand over his. Her skin was warm, but she shivered—John realized very suddenly that she was  _ soaking _ wet. “I need you to get Boomer. He’s over there somewhere, close enough to hear a whistle. You can whistle, right? Or just—say his name, he’ll respond to that too.”

“‘M drugged,” he replied. “No good. Besides, he doesn’t like me.” The last half came out petulant. He thought very little of Kian’s voice crackling through the radio, or that he’d said he’d be there soon, or that someone had drugged him and left him in the middle of the forest. All he could think about was the problem being presented to him: Elliot was asking him for something, and he couldn’t give it to her.

“You  _ have _ to,” she reiterated firmly. “You told me you’d do anything I asked.”

“I  _ did,” _ John insisted. “Don’t you remember? I f—”

“Shh!”

Elliot grabbed his hand and yanked, hard, hauling him into some thicker brush. The whole gesture of it had his vision spinning like a slot machine.

“John, you have to go,” she whispered furiously. The sound of heavy, leisurely footsteps thudded somewhere a little ways away. “Please. You  _ said. _ ”

“We can both go,” he whispered back. And then, because she hadn’t recognized his good fortune earlier: “I have a radio.”

“I can’t,” she replied. Her voice broke a little, slipping past a furious hiss and cracking on an emotion that John didn’t want to know. “I can’t go.”

“Why?”

“I have to—” Elliot paused, her gaze flickering tiredly. “John, I have to take a break, I’ve—I’m so tired.”

He paused. “I’ll wait, too.”

“You need to go.”

“I don’t want to. I’ll stay, too, and we’ll go together—”

“No,” she insisted. “Fucking— _ God _ you are so annoying—”

John heard, very faintly, the low and threatening  _ click-click _ of someone pumping a shotgun. He paused, and Elliot did too, and then she pulled him forward by his shirt and kissed him hard. She tasted a little like river water, but mostly like _her,_ and the warmth of her mouth against his made heat bloom all over him like he was green and Spring, again.

“John,” she whispered against his mouth, nearly inaudible, “please. Get Boomer, radio your brothers. We’ll catch up on the other side. I—”

Another couple of footsteps echoed in the stillness of the night. All of the birds and wildlife had fled; they knew there was a big, bad predator out in the evening, and John felt that knowledge twisting something violent and wretched inside of him.

“Do not fucking die,” he hissed at her. “You’ve stayed stubbornly alive for this long. Do  _ not.” _

She nodded faintly. “Yes, boss.”

He went to move, but she stopped him, lifting a finger to her mouth; each beat of his heart rumbled violently in his ears, and he thought he might pass out if he didn’t get moving fucking  _ soon;  _ each second spent crouching still and silent in the brush was swaying him viciously back and forth, trying to get him to face plant into the ground.

Elliot, back against the tree, let go of his shirt. She mouthed,  _ Go, _ and then darted out, quick and fast and taking with her all of the vibrant sound and warmth in the world.

John's legs lifted him to a standing position. It felt like operating heavy machinery; every movement ground through his skeleton laboriously. But he  _ was _ going; gripping the radio, trying his hardest to sprint, when he heard the sound of a shotgun shell pelting the earth in one sharp, gritty blow.

And then a familiar voice: “Where are you, little rabbit?”

_ Please. _

Everything in him was telling him to turn around.  _ Screaming _ at him—but he knew that was exactly what Kian wanted, too. To have them both there, in the same place, to make one of them watch the other die.

So, he didn’t.

He kept going, and when he got far enough away to be convinced that Kian was preoccupied with Elliot, he stopped and looked around. The night was eerily still and pulsed dimly around him. He glanced down at his feet; the grass reached up and around his shoes, coiling around him, trying to hold him down.

“Fuck,” he hissed, hurriedly stepping forward. “Find dog. Radio Joseph. Boomer?”

He kept his voice low as he crept through the woods, fiddling clumsily with the radio as he moved. When he found a channel whose numbers looked vaguely familiar—and  _ familiar _ was a stretch, considering that accessing just about anything in his brain was like feeling someone’s face in the dark and guessing who it was—he pressed down on the talk button.

“Joseph? Jacob? Somebody?” He let off the talk button. “Boomer?”

No barking. Was Elliot drugged too? Had they been hallucinating the dog barking? 

John had just begun to give up on the idea of doing anything other than wander aimlessly in the dark woods when he made it to the edge of the treeline and saw the dog. Unfortunately, the beast was tied up to a wooden stake, growling low and threatening the two men as they walked idly around him and to the van, busying themselves; soft music played from the car. They seemed to be waiting patiently for Kian to finish whatever it was he was doing. Killing Elliot?

_ Fuck, _ he thought hastily.  _ Gotta hurry. _

He watched as one of the men set his gun down on the bed of the open van, stretching and chatting conversationally with his companion. When he wandered back over to Boomer and said, “Here, doggy,” the Heeler lunged viciously and set off barking, teeth snapping. He sighed.

“Stupid dog.”

They turned back toward the road, and John made his way closer to Boomer. If he could get that lead unclipped—if he could do it without them noticing…

“Fucking shithole,” one of the men said, backs turned to him as they lit a cigarette that got passed between them. “Can’t wait to purge this place and get out.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, do you know…”

As their conversation drifted, so did John’s attention. He slipped out from the cover of the underbrush; instantly, Boomer’s eyes were on him. His hackles went up, and John lifted his hands, keeping them open.

In hindsight, he’d probably feel stupid thinking about this moment. The dog wasn’t holding him hostage. But it felt  _ a little  _ like he was, anyway.

“Hey,” he whispered, creeping closer. “Gonna let you off, beastie.”

Boomer eyed him, eyes flattened back against his head.

“You wanna get ‘em?” he continued, glancing over at the men as he reached for Boomer’s makeshift collar, clipped onto the lead. He didn’t know what kinds of gestures or phrases Elliot used to get the dog to do what she wanted. He only knew that Boomer  _ did _ , sometimes without her saying, and so he said again, more urgently, “You wanna get ‘em, beast?”

The urgency of his tone seemed to spark something in Boomer. His ears pricked forward. John’s fingers found the lead clipped around his collar, pulled on the little metal clasp, and let it drop to the ground.

Boomer watched him, expectantly.

“Well, go on,” he whispered, gesturing. That seemed to be all that was needed; the cattle dog darted forward, teeth sinking into one man’s leg and yanking hard enough to unbalance him and pull him to the ground; the dog's head thrashed violently, ripping out of him guttural snarls.

John blinked, and thought,  _ holy shit, is this what he’s been like this whole time? _

There wasn’t a lot of time to spend thinking about it, because the other man was whirling angrily, shouting something, and then his eyes landed on  _ John. _

They both looked at the gun sitting on the tailgate of the van at the same time.

_“Fuck,”_ John hissed, lunging forward and grabbing wildly; he wasn’t entirely sure that he even stayed upright, the strange back-and-forth pull in his head having only abated a little, but he reached for the gun and snatched his hand back, fumbling with the safety.

The whole thing felt like an  _ eternity _ —comedically so. While the sounds of Boomer mauling the unarmed cultist echoed in his ears, John’s fingers clumsily switched the safety off and he fired recklessly; the bullet  _ barely _ grazed the cultist’s calf, and as the man reached for  _ him,  _ John pulled the trigger again. Once, twice, three times, the bullets planted themselves in the man’s chest, jerking him back with each impact.

A heavy  _ thud _ echoed in the night as the man slumped to the ground. Boomer had handily dispatched of the other one; his mouth was red and wet, and when John struggled to his feet, he saw that the man’s throat had been ripped open.

“Nice,” he breathed. Boomer regarded him warily, unimpressed with the compliment. He quickly shuffled the safety back on and tucked the gun into the back of his jeans, pushing the tailgate of the van up. When the dog whined, low and uncertain, he glanced back at him and sighed.

He pulled the tailgate back down. “Load up. We’re gonna get her back.”

Boomer leapt up into the back of the van, nails sliding on the hard plastic. It took John about five minutes of rifling through the pockets of the two men to find the car keys. While he wasn’t entirely confident in his ability to drive, he  _ had _ just planted a couple of bullets in a man, so he supposed he'd be fine.

As he climbed into the driver’s side, he shut the door and settled in and carefully, meticulously slid the key into the ignition. The van purred to life as though John’s last week hadn’t been an entire fucking series of absolute fuckhead jokes, and he let out a breath.

The glint of something blue and reflective in the cupholder between the two front seats caught his eye. He glanced down, blinking.

“Hey,” he said, reaching down. “My sunglasses.” Tucking them into his shirt, he checked the rearview mirror and gently, _gently_ pushed the car into drive.

"Alright, beastie," John muttered. "Let's get this ended, huh?"

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

The concussive blast of bullet meeting wood rang in her ears; chips of bark and the guts of the tree showered her, the shot echoing just above her head, and she thought,  _ fuck, I just want to be dead already. _ She was so tired; moving was a luxury that was not afforded to her anymore, each gesture as she struggled to her feet tipped and fettered by the bruises and wounds that littered her body.

Finding John had taken about fifteen minutes, fourteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds of which had been spent agonizing about where to look first. She didn’t recognize where they were, or know her way around, and she was barefoot and soaking wet and shivering and she just kept thinking about how badly she wanted to lay down.

_ We’ll go together. _ Fuck, John was so stupid. She might have actually had a moment to breathe if he’d just listened to her and did as she said. But that wasn’t ever how these things went, was it?

A calloused hand closed around her wrist and yanked her to her feet. For a second, in the blurring, thrumming night, between the whispering voices in the wind and the lurching of the great beast hunting her down, Elliot saw the dark fabric of a button-up shirt and thought,  _ it’s John, it’s John; he came back for me and now we’re going to get out. _

“I win,” Kian purred.

His voice bled through her skull, stretching and warping as the agony crashed over her in a scalding wave. Kian’s fingers wound iron-like around her wrist, holding her there, and his other hand came up to grip her chin; playfully, he shook her head back and forth, like he was trying to jostle her out of deep sleep.

“Don’t look so sad. I’m not going to  _ kill _ you, Elliot.” He regarded her with something like amusement, eyes glittering dark and obsidian in what little moonlight had managed to seep through the tree cover. “Do you know what  _ mor  _ means? It means mother. We’re going to keep you for It, and when it’s time, we’ll slice you open. You will make It  _ so _ happy.”

She gripped his wrist as hard as she could and tried to push his hand from her face. Kian had discarded the shotgun in favor of having both hands to grab her, and as he  _ gripped _ her face—the wide, calloused crux of his hand covering her mouth while his fingers reached the dip of her jaw—she thought,  _ Something has to be done. _

Elliot had promised Joey.  _ Even if I have to fucking die for it. _ She had promised, and that meant it had to be done.

Muddling through the panic, Elliot squirmed under his hand, opened her mouth, and bit down as hard as she could. The disgusting taste of hot copper flooded her mouth instantly; the webbing between his thumb and pointer finger wasn’t  _ meant _ to take teeth ripping and tearing, and she _ was _ ripping and tearing;  even with the limited mobility she had, she wrenched her head anyway she could, intent on taking some piece of Kian with her.

A wretched kind of sound came out of him. He tried to yank his hand back off of her face, and she bit down harder, anywhere her teeth could catch and grip. If she could hit bone, she thought; if she could sink her teeth right into the marrow of him, maybe then she would have felt like she got some repayment for what he’d done.

Kian yanked his hand free, gripping his wrist as crimson streamed down his palm and arm. His eyes were wild and dark; for a split second they stood there, staring at each other, two beasts nursing wounds and waiting for the other to make a move.

Elliot grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him forward, slamming her face into his. It would have been nearly impossible to bodily force Kian’s to move had he not been clutching his wounded hand, and for that she was grateful—grateful, she would tell herself, around the ricocheting stars of pain blurring behind her eyes, using the hardest part of her skull to bash into Kian’s nose and mouth.

And then she ran.

The gun was around, somewhere, dusted in pine needles and nightfall; like a needle in a haystack. She heard someone spitting behind her, and she thought,  _ I hope I broke your fucking nose, you piece of shit, _ just before she ducked into a thick bustle of brush and behind a rock.

Around her, the world blurred and fuzzed black. She tried to furiously blink it away, but every second spent standing still meant that her body was suddenly remembering how tired and overworked it was, how much she had done, how much she had suffered.  _ We could stop now, _ the tired little girl inside of her said.  _ We should. We should stop now. _

But Kian had said it himself; he wasn’t planning on killing her. She wouldn’t get rest even if she gave up. He might have changed his mind after she’d bit through his hand and headbutted him, but—

That wasn’t a chance she could take. Not for herself, and not for Joey, and not for the girl she had been that night in her apartment, either.

Heavy footfalls echoed just a few feet away from her. Her mouth was still flooded with the taste of Kian’s blood. As she made her way to the other side of the boulder she’d taken refuge behind and peeked out, she thought,  _ I’d do it again, given the chance. I’d rip him open with my teeth if I got the opportunity. Give me the fucking chance. _

Moonlight spilled through the trees and into the clearing they had just been in as the wind pushed clouds out of the way. The glint of dark metal, threatening, caught her eye; the shotgun was there, with hopefully at least one shell in it—one that she could put straight through Kian’s ugly fucking face.

And he was nowhere to be seen, either. Even as she leaned further out, trying to see around the boulder, she couldn’t see him crashing through the underbrush; she couldn’t hear him, either. Just the sound of the wind, pine needles skittering across the ground, a twig snap and—

A second too late, Elliot’s pain-addled brain realized the breaking branch was just behind her. Fingers fisted into the hair at the back of her skull and dragged, hauling her out of the underbrush and back into the clearing, tossing her like a ragdoll. All of the already-battered ribs shrieked on impact, and she wheezed out a breath that had blood and spit flickering across the forest floor.

Tired. She was so tired. So tired, and the world blurred and tried to fizz and pop out of existence around her, a sticky-wet hand forced her eyes forward.

Blood streamed down Kian’s face from their earlier collision. When he grinned at her, his teeth were stained pink, red seeping in the gaps.

“Hello, little rabbit,” he ground out, pushing away her scrambling hands and pinning the left down. “You put up quite a fight.”

Elliot tried to search in her spatial memory—what was left standing of it, anyway—for where she had seen the gun. But it was getting harder to breathe, and to think, and Kian’s fingers dug into her jaw and cheeks. An awful, animalistic noise came out of her at the pressure—it was a whimper, but unlike anything she’d ever heard out of herself, unlike anything she’d known she was capable of making.

“I wonder—”

His voice came out in a low murmur, spit-slicked and venomous, his nose grazing the slope of her cheekbone.

“—will you feel guilty about this, too? When I drag you back kicking and screaming, and make you watch as I cut each of those fucking hillbillies open? I know some of them got out. I'll find them, too.”

It had to be close, she reasoned through the haze in her brain; the gun had to be nearby. She’d just been looking at it. Her body was trying to give up; Kian’s fingers pinning her wrist down and bruising her neck, his words hissed out against her skin, were all tripping that strange little trigger in her brain that finally wanted to give up fighting and do something else.

Quit.

“ _ Mor,”  _ Kian purred against her skin. “Mother, you’ll be so good for It, I know you will.”

Joey, clutching her tight.  _ “I never doubted you’d be able to get me out.” _

“It likes it best like this, you know.”

John, mouth so close to her ear.  _ “I said, it’s a good thing you’re more devil than woman.” _

Each second that ticked by, filled with Kian’s voice, the fingers of her one free hand inched. S he felt them close around cool metal.

“It likes the ones that fight back.”

She gripped the gun hard, and swung.

It collided with a heavy-handed  _ thump _ against the side of Kian’s face, and he jerked back. He still straddled her, but with room between them now, Elliot could lurch forward, bowling as much of her weight into his midsection as she could to push him off of her and send him reeling back into the hard surface of the boulder.

Her fingers worked fast as she struggled to her feet. Pure adrenaline, pure muscle memory, as she flicked the safety off, cocked the shotgun, and pulled the trigger.

It clicked.

_ Empty. _

Kian barked out a laugh wet with blood. There was a wound on his temple that was bleeding, now, and as he struggled to sit up more she could see him wince—the collision with the boulder hadn’t done him any good. Elliot pulled the trigger again, and again, and each time it clicked she found herself getting angrier and angrier. Filling with poison, up to her brim, like someone had just uncorked it.

“It’s empty, mother,” Kian rumbled at her. “You think I brought any more ammo than those two shells?” He spat blood out of his mouth and cocked his head, regarding her with dark eyes. “I told you, I’m not going to kill you.”

_ I’m not, _ like he still thought he had won. Pure, vibrating fury radiated through her body. This was supposed to be her victory; this was supposed to be her revenge for Joey. For her life. For  _ her. _

It would be.  _ It’s mine, _ she thought viciously,  _ this fucking moment is mine. _

“Yeah, well,” Elliot spit out, digging her fingers into the metal, “can't say the same.”

The weight of the gun was not  _ unlike _ a bat; so when she took the barrel of the gun and swung it like one, it felt familiar. Just like when she was ten, playing rec-league softball, only this time the bat was an empty pump-action shotgun and the ball was Kian’s head.

When the dull impact send vibrations rattling up her arm, and Kian keeled to the side, wheezing and biting out something venomous in Swedish, Elliot gripped the shotgun harder and swung again.

And again.

And again.

Each collision brought it closer to the satisfying, wet crunch of blood and bone on the redhead’s face. Elliot couldn’t have counted how many times she swung if someone asked her—or pinpointed the exact moment that Kian stopped moving, stopped breathing.

She could only think about the way he’d planted his words right against her skin, gripped her,  _ I win. _

_ Do you know what I get to do with things that belong to me? _

“Nothing,” she ground out, when her arms burned and ached and her vision fuzzed with exhaustion. “You don't get to do _anything.”_

“Deputy?”

Blood spray littered her face. She was sure that her teeth were stained red, too. Each breath heaved exhaustively through her body, rattling, and when she turned her head to the source of the voice, she saw John and Jacob standing at the edge of the clearing; lights blurred through the trees, the sound of trucks and voices echoing in the still night air.

Boomer darted out from behind them, immediately pressed to her legs. She held the shotgun loosely in her hand.

“El,” John said, softer than Jacob had, “It’s me.”

Her gaze flickered back to the brutalized corpse in front of her. She thought, faintly, that there was no way her life was going to be normal after this again, but that was okay. She’d promised Joey.

_ If I have to die for it, I will.  _

She’d done it. And maybe she  _ had _ died for it.

Jacob had taken a few steps toward her as the thought echoed in her head. Slowly, like she was a stray dog snarling over a cow bone. When John moved to follow, she saw Jacob put his hand out and stop him.

“Put the gun down,” Jacob said, his voice still and calm. Elliot blinked tiredly.

She wanted to do it. She wanted to let go of it. But that girl that she had been—that girl who had cried under the blanket fort, who had thought,  _ I don’t know how I let him do that to me,  _ the girl who had sat on the floor of her bedroom in Hope County and blinked through furious tears as she struggled to understand herself—no longer wept; that girl was furious, and so Elliot gripped the gun tighter.

As though it made it any less of a weapon, she said, “It’s empty.”

Jacob looked at Kian’s face, bashed-in. Obliterated. “I know.”

Boomer whined at her feet, nosing her empty hand quietly and gazing up at her with big, brown eyes. Something strange washed over her, an emotion that made her lip tremble and her eyes burn. The Heeler nuzzled her hand again, and she sucked in a shaking breath as finally— _ finally, finally _ —the tears stung down her cheeks.

She dropped the shotgun. John said her name, and Jacob dropped his arm, and she realized that it was  _ relief  _ she was feeling now.

Only vaguely aware of Jacob kicking the shotgun away from her, the world blurred as Elliot felt John’s hands cradling her face. Each place where his fingers traced the bruises from Kian, that pulse of relief ran stronger through her body until it was overstimulating, overwhelming. When John kissed her, it was almost frantic—she could taste the blood in her own mouth, his fingers tangling into her hair as he kissed her again and again, until her lungs ached with the need to breathe. But each kiss brought her somewhere else. It took her somewhere that she didn't have to think about anything except John in that single moment.

“Hey,” John said, their noses brushing. His movements were sluggish and uncoordinated, his voice still slurring a little. “I have you. Right here with me, El, don’t go anywhere.”

“Yeah,” she managed out. Her voice wobbled, and she sucked in a sharp, stuttering breath. “John—”

His thumbs swept across her cheekbones, smearing more blood than they wiped away tears, and as the sound of voices echoed dimly around them, she lifted her hands and gripped his wrists. Through the coppery tang in the air, she could smell his cologne; her lashes fluttered and John pressed their foreheads together.

“It’s okay.” John murmured the words, tugging her against him, into his chest. “It’s all over now.”

_ No,  _ she thought as his arms circled her, pulling her closer, Boomer barking at anyone who wandered near.

_ It’s not even close. _


	17. what the wolves taught me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This is what the wolves taught me:  
> the most beautiful word is girl.  
> The most beautiful part of her body  
> is what she did to survive."
> 
> — Topaz Winters, from “Lone / Pack,” Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of an interlude chapter, this one! Last chap was a bit intense, so this one's more of a transition--not a lot happens in terms of plot movement, so everyone can go ahead and catch your breath. ♡ As always, a big and huge thank you to everyone who reads and comments, has come and said hi to me on my [tumblr](http://proudspires.tumblr.com/). This fandom has been so incredibly lovely and welcoming and just understanding of my general chaos and my inability to bend to canon at all. I'm just so grateful to each and every one of you! Thank you thank you thank you!
> 
> Big thank you to @shallow-gravy for lending me their eyeballs and for making me [this GORGEOUS moodboard](https://proudspires.tumblr.com/post/636093400135991296) for Elliot. When I say that I like died inside when I saw it, it's because my life became complete and I was ready to ascend. Thank you so much!!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: mentions of gore and blood, like a LOT of mentions of blood, mentions of self-harm, shower sex without Reasonable Protection, also like kind of dubious if you squint because John is tripping, bad decisions are made as well as some questionable dirty talk (John really likes that she beat a man to death). Elliot kind of has like one (1) tiny powertrip. Idk man just like proceed with caution??

John felt pretty good, all things considered.

Yeah, he was probably going to feel like shit when came off of his high; yeah, kissing Elliot _did_ smear blood all over his mouth, but when he spotted the two of them in the reflection of the truck’s dark windows, Elliot’s face and hair splattered in crimson and the very obvious incrimination on his mouth, he thought, _well, don’t we make quite a pair?_

Everything blurred and pulsed pleasantly around him now as he sat in the passenger seat of the truck. The crash of the drug wasn’t really much of a crash at all—idly, John wondered how it was they got the downturn to be so easy, so slow, so mild. Each time he took in a breath it felt like the car expanded with him. There wasn’t anything the world, in that moment, that wasn’t _for him,_ not a single thing that didn’t sway and pulse and beat in time with the rhythm of his own heart.

Except for Elliot. When he looked at her, red sparked off of her in violent waves to their own metronome, mimicking the dashes of crimson on her face and in her hair; the bruises welled red and blue along the pillar of her throat, her jaw, one on the corner of her mouth. She looked wild; her eyes moved with a sharp clarity that had him wondering how long that Wrath had really been sitting inside of her.

 _Not a good girl,_ he thought, watching Elliot drag her thumb from one end of her mouth to the other, wiping the blood their liplock had smeared around. He could still taste it in his mouth. _Not anymore._

You couldn’t be good _and_ bash a man’s skull in, could you? And it _was_ bashed in—John had gotten one single good, long look at Kian’s face, and there was nothing of it left except bloody mush and two battered eyeballs barely stuffed into his skull. Gruesome. Well past the point of killing him.

“They attacked the compound,” Jacob was saying from the driver’s seat, pulling out onto the highway with a not-so-kind lurch as they hit pavement. “About an hour after you took off. I bet they were waiting. Fucking cockroaches.”

John glanced into the rearview mirror. He meant to look and see if he could catch any movement in the trees—anything that wasn’t Eden’s Gate—but he just looked at Elliot. Sharp-eyed, bloodied, fingers knotted into Boomer’s fur as the dog lay with his head in her lap. It wouldn’t have done any good, looking back there; everything was moving. Everything was breathing.

“Drugged me,” he offered helpfully, his tongue feeling a little too big for his mouth. Jacob looked at him through the sides of his eyes and hit the cruise button. “Got a radio back, too. I tried calling you guys, but—”

“But not Elliot,” Jacob said, less a question and more a confirmation of what he believed to be true. John shrugged idly.

His eldest brother glanced back at Elliot then, but she was silent for two heartbeats longer than what it should have taken for her to answer before she replied, “Wouldn’t have been fun for him if I was.”

“Yeah, well,” the redhead muttered. “You sure made...” His voice trailed off, and his eyes fixed on the road again. “... _Work_ of him, didn’t you, deputy?”

Elliot sighed. That Jacob said _you made work_ instead of _you made quick work_ made John painfully, delightfully aware of how many times and how much effort it must have taken for Elliot to cave Kian’s face in, and that knowledge writhed pleasant and desirous in his stomach.

But Jacob didn’t sound pleased. John supposed that he wouldn’t be, all things considered. Kian was dead, sure, but the rest of the Family had almost certainly scattered like rats to whatever corner of Hope County they could reach. They would be a problem. By now, they were all supposed to be hunkering down in the bunker to outlast the End Days, and instead, they were contesting with an entirely different pest.

Maybe Elliot was right; maybe without Ase and Kian, they would just leave. Go and kill some other tiny town of people. Get their skin melted off by the nuclear war.

In fact, if John really thought about it—and it _did_ take work—he didn’t think that the Family was much of a problem at _all_ anymore. The only thing that remained questionable, and up in the air, was Elliot herself.

 _My wife,_ he thought, his brain ticking and idling like an engine cooling down, wading through the neck-high water of his thoughts. Each leap from one thread to the next felt sugary-slow. _Little killer, aren’t you?_

He didn’t think that she would be content with hunkering down in a bunker. That would take some time to warm up to, probably—and, John reasoned, he would have to _first_ broach the subject of their legal binding. But that was another problem, for another time, and right now all John wanted to think about was getting home and enjoying his high while he had it.

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When Elliot was very young, she remembered coming across a snake coiled on the hot pavement of the path up to their front door. It had been after school; her mother had had the windows of the kitchen open, playing an old song, something about a dream, and she could hear it from all the way down at the road. The snake was basking—drinking in the sunlight, mottled in shades of brown and copper, flecks of white highlighting the prettiest parts of it. The snake had been a dream to a girl who ran wild and barefoot through every inch of the Hope County wilderness she could reach; the speckled pattern begging for a touch, it’s elegant coil beckoning for attention.

The window to the kitchen had been open, and the second her mother had seen her staring at the snake, she’d come sprinting out the front door. Her mother had never liked any kind of animal that didn’t have four legs and wouldn’t fall under the “fluffy retriever” category, so at first, she had thought it was just her mother’s aversion to the scaly members of the animal kingdom; but after her mother’s insistent shrieking that she give the rattler a wide berth on the way up to the front steps, she’d thought maybe it was actual danger worrying her mother.

Of course, Scarlet had called the sheriff’s office and immediately demanded someone come and get rid of the snake (even though you weren’t _supposed_ to call the sheriff’s office for that kind of thing, there _was_ animal control) while she made herself a vodka soda.

“He’s pretty, mama,” Elliot had said, staring out the window at the snake. “Did you see his spots?”

 _“Pretty.”_ Scarlet had never sounded more displeased. She squeezed her lime into her drink, muttering furiously. “All those spots mean that ugly thing would kill you with one bite, bunny. Do you hear me? Venomous. Stay away from it.”

Now, sitting in the back seat of an Eden’s Gate truck, her face mottled with a dead man’s arterial spray, _she_ felt like that prairie rattler, her spots belying a poison and vicious bite.

 _Pretty,_ she thought tiredly, combing her fingers through Boomer’s fur. _Pretty venomous._

Her gaze drifted absently, away from the landscape blurring past them as Jacob cruised back to the compound and instead onto the occupants of the car. John was leaned back in his seat, eyes fluttering shut occasionally like he couldn’t keep them open very well, and Jacob had a tight grip on the steering wheel. A pack of cigarettes sat in one of the cupholders in the center console, and she reached for them on autopilot.

Jacob’s gaze flickered down to her hand snaking between them. For a second, he looked like he’d been about to grab her hand, like maybe he thought she was trying something—but his fingers stayed on the steering wheel, and he said, “Probably a lighter in the console.”

Elliot snagged the cigarettes and then fished around in the console until she found the lighter. The cotton fabric of Ase’s high-necked dress felt sticky on her skin, like she was in the middle of a summer storm; chill seeped down into her bones, and her skin bloomed feverish, and she thought _this is when the crash happens,_ but it didn’t hit. She lit a cigarette and rolled the window down before she took a drag and felt the tiredness pull at the corners of her vision.

The song from her memory played on a gentle loop in her head. Leisurely, lulling. _So dream, when the day is new; dream, and they might come true._ Her mother had listened to that song so many times, growing up. She wondered, briefly, if her mother was alright. If she’d gotten out. If she’d gone with the resistance and fled, or if she was still here somewhere, or if she was dead.

“Anyone get hurt?” she asked after a minute. “At the compound?”

“A few,” Jacob replied. His eyes narrowed. “None dead, though.”

Elliot exhaled smoke out the window. She thought she would have felt dirty, now, sticky with Kian’s breath and his fingers and his mouth against her skin—but she didn’t, not right away. She just felt—

“Sure that’s disappointing for you,” Jacob continued.

—tired.

“Eat shit, Jacob,” she muttered. “I just solved your biggest problem.”

“No, you _didn’t,”_ he snapped back. “Not by a long fucking mile, deputy.”

The redhead eyed her through the mirror, but she didn’t say anything to that—and for the rest of the ride back to the compound, it was blissful, empty silence.

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John thought he must have certainly fallen asleep in the car, because one second he was blinking through Jacob talking about how the compound had been attacked, and the next they were parking.

The compound looked a little worse for wear, but it was quiet; if not for the bullet holes in the walls of buildings, and the occasional blood spray dried nearly black with time, he wouldn’t have known anything was amiss at all. He would have thought it was a regular evening—but was far from it.

At the very least, John felt a little clearer now. His high was slowly cruising down, and he’d probably feel all of his bruises once he sobered up, but for now he _buzzed._

Jacob climbed out of the driver’s seat beside him, and his body operated on autopilot to do the same. He saw Boomer drop from the truck and stick his nose to the ground instantly, eyes wary and waiting to see if any danger still lurked. When Elliot’s feet touched the ground, the Heeler did a single loop around her legs and then nosed her hand.

“John,” his brother said, his voice clipped. “Chapel.”

“Right,” John replied. He glanced over his shoulder and then looked at Elliot; she took in a little breath and waved her hand.

“Gonna shower,” she told him. “I’m good.”

John reached for her, fingers itching; Elliot caught his wrist before his hand could land on her shoulder, or her face, but she used it to pull him closer, and then _she_ kissed him—leaned up and pressed her mouth, tasting like wild copper and a little like ash, against his. John’s brain fizzed white static and he sighed against her kiss, and he was reminded of how electric she had felt back there in the forest with the buzz of her kill still sitting under her skin.

 _“John,”_ Jacob insisted, louder this time, _“now.”_

“Okay,” John said, but he said it into the kiss, sliding his hand from Elliot’s grasp. “Okay, I’m—”

And like that she had pulled away from him; she whistled for Boomer and set off across the yard for the bunkhouse, and he turned and forced his legs to move towards the chapel. _I’m good,_ she’d said. What did she mean? What did “good” constitute?

His brain felt too muggy for him to contemplate whether or not he was spiraling on a thought because it had some other meaning or because he was high, so he just pushed aside as he walked into the chapel, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Joseph was there, sitting beside Faith; their heads bowed in silence, only disturbed when the sound of his and Jacob’s footsteps echoed in the quiet.

“You’re safe,” Joseph said, sounding relieved. As John came closer, his older brother lifted an arm; beckoning him, and he went instantly. Joseph’s hand cradled the back of his head and pressed their foreheads together in an embrace that was far softer than anything that had occurred between them as of late. It felt like John’s entire body sighed in relief. “We were so worried, John.”

“And high as shit,” Jacob replied as they neared. “Tripping fuckin' balls, aren’t you, Johnny?”

“It’s fine,” John insisted, though he could hear the words slur a little even as he tried very hard to punctuate them on their way out of his mouth. “Not so bad.”

“You look awful,” Faith murmured. “What happened?”

“Um,” he said.

“Kian’s dead,” Jacob explained helpfully.

Joseph blinked. His expression was guarded, but hopeful. “Good news, then.”

“Deputy Honeysett bashed his skull in with a shotgun.”

Faith said, “Oh.”

A moment of silence stretched between them. Jacob paced to the front of the chapel; Joseph absently scratched at his cheek, his hand having withdrawn from John as he took in this news from his brothers. John tried not to shift too much, but the silence _was_ killing him—he didn’t know how Joseph was going to feel about that. If he would still want Elliot with them.

“Was she?” Joseph asked after a minute. “Drugged?”

“No,” John said. “Not—I mean, she said she wasn't.”

“So she did it on her own,” he continued, “without being influenced by anything that could arguably… Cause a hallucination which would make her do that.”

“I—” John’s brain struggled to keep up with Joseph’s train of thought. “I—guess—”

“This _is_ good news, then.” Joseph’s voice bloomed with warmth. “Don’t you see? There is no person more in _need_ of us,” he continued, “than someone who has nowhere left to go.”

“And where would she go,” Jacob muttered, “that wouldn’t commit her to a psychiatric ward.”

Joseph nodded. His hand returned to the back of John’s neck and gripped there, firm and steadfast.

“You’ve done so well, John,” he said, “but our time is running out. You know that, don’t you? We are borrowing it now, from God himself, and I don’t intend to go into the next phase of our lives with a debt to pay.”

John blinked through the fog in his brain and swallowed thickly. He _thought_ he knew what it was that Joseph was telling him—but before he could think too hard on it, Jacob interjected, “John hasn’t told the deputy about their blissful _union.”_

“What?” Faith asked, head snapping to look at him.

“Well,” John began.

“Actually,” Jacob continued, “he _lied_ about it.”

 _“Well,”_ John tried again, irritably, “it had already been done, and she didn’t remember it thanks to Faith’s handiwork, and at the moment in time I thought—maybe—it would be worse off to tell her rather than…”

He fumbled for the words he wanted to say; the truth was that there _were_ no good excuses. He just didn’t trust Elliot not to go absolutely feral when she found out, because she certainly didn’t remember it which meant she _certainly_ was going to have feelings about it. And that was a problem.

But a problem for another time. Right?

“You’re gonna stick us in a bunker with her,” Jacob snapped, “and let her lose her shit on us while we’re trapped.”

“I _won’t,”_ John insisted.

Joseph exhaled softly. “John—”

“I’ll—I’ve got it under control!” he exclaimed, looking at Joseph. “I know Elliot better than any of you, and I’ll find the right way to tell her, and it’ll be _fine._ I _know.”_

His older brother watched him with a pensive gaze. For a moment, John thought he saw regret flash across Joseph’s face—maybe for praising him too fast, maybe for entrusting this to him at all in the first place. But if he let someone down, that wasn’t his _fault,_ right? This shit was so far beyond the plan of attack—so far beyond what they had anticipated, that there was a margin for error.

 _No,_ John thought, _no, there isn’t. I know better. I’m better. I know._

“Borrowed time, John,” Joseph cautioned at last. “We’ve got to get rid of these locusts, and then we _will_ be retreating for the End. You understand?”

John steadied the breath that tried to slip out of him. _I don’t want to go into the next phase of our lives with a debt to pay._

“Yes, Joseph,” he replied. “I understand.”

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The stinging shower water ran pink to the drain. Elliot dunked her head under the water and passed her hands over her face; she stood there for a moment letting the water pool in the cups of her hands until her lungs ached and she had to let it go, spilling over her neck and shoulders. The dark dress, wretched thing, had been discarded and tossed into the trash; she thought if she had to look at herself in it for one more second she was going to come fucking undone, and that just wouldn't do.

The door clicked open; a brief moment of hesitation sounded before she heard footsteps coming inside. “El?”

She turned in the shower, wiping water from her eyes before tugging the curtain back. John regarded her with eyes only half-intoxicated, more clarity about them now than there had been in the truck.

Elliot watched him for a moment as she considered. The chill hadn't left her bones, even in the scalding hot water.

“Are you getting in?” she asked, watching his gaze flicker absently before landing back on her.

“Are you inviting me?”

Elliot pulled back from the curtain and ducked back under the water. “I’ve never known you to need an invite.”

“Fair enough, I won't disappoint.”

There was the gentle rustle of fabric, the push of the curtain, and then she wasn’t alone in the shower anymore; but it was fine, because she didn’t _want_ to be alone anymore, because it felt like her entire body was vibrating and she couldn’t get it to stop. Unlike John, who she guessed was cruising down the same gentle crash that she had felt when the Family had drugged her with their weird shit, there was nothing inhibiting her body now. Only the quick, sharp, violent buzzing of blood on her mind, under her fingernails, between her _teeth._

It felt good, too. An adrenaline high; the fall, right before impact.

John’s hands slid along her hips. The calloused pads of his fingers—fingers meant to hurt, to twist and coerce—skimmed the scars along her abdomen, sloping across her hip bones; she didn’t have to glance down to see that’s what he was doing. _You’ll tell me,_ he’d said that morning. _Eventually._

“I did them,” she said around the dull roaring in her ears. The words tasted strange on her tongue. A verbal admittance was very different from scribbling it into a journal. But the catharsis had begun; with Kian’s collapsed skull imprinted into her mind forever, it felt as though a tension had released in her, pulled taut and sharp and finally ripped free.

“Did what?” he asked, nosing past wet hair to glide his mouth along the pillar of her throat.

“The scars,” Elliot murmured. “I did them.” _To feel real,_ she wanted to say, _I did them so I could know that I was still real,_ but the words wouldn’t come. Maybe they didn’t need to.

John’s thumb swept along the one that stretched over her hip bone. He hummed, low and hungry, into her skin. He might have been coming down from his high, but it didn’t seem to be pushing him into sleep; he was _enjoying_ it, the gentle careening to sobriety.

And maybe tomorrow she would regret telling him. Maybe tomorrow she would feel dirty for the way that she killed Kian, instead of intoxicated with her own magic. Maybe, maybe, maybe—but that was a thing to think about when the time came, and just like she had done everything else about herself that she hadn't liked, she would strangle it and move on.

John turned her around so that he could pull her against him. He said, “I thought so,” like he had recognized it in her, and she thought about that dream. _Just like me,_ holding her blood-covered hands in his. _You’re just like me._

Lifting her arms, Elliot carded her fingers through his hair and then gripped, pulling him in to press her mouth against his. She kissed him the way that she wanted to; no time for shyness now, she thought, no room for hesitation. John had watched her cave a man’s face in, and he was still here and hungry, so she kissed him hard—dug her teeth into his lip and revelled in the way that he moaned and leaned into her.

He’d kissed her frantically, too, back in the clearing and with Kian’s body just a foot away from them. Kissed her with blood in her mouth, greedy and insatiable, and _frenzied,_ like he’d wanted her right then and there and wasn’t willing to let her go until he absolutely had to.

The raised skin of his Sloth scar dragged under her fingers. She dug her nails into the soft expanse of his shoulder, and he made a low, delicious noise against her mouth. _I could give him more,_ she thought, dizzied at the idea of it, at this sudden humming, heady power she felt had become hers. This _something_ that had become unlocked inside of her. _I could give him more, and he’d thank me for it._

“Elliot,” John began, hands gripping her hips as he nudged her back against the shower wall. But he didn’t follow it up with anything; he just kept her there, skin on skin, heat bleeding out from every inch of him. His hand drifted up above her head, fumbling at the window, trying to push it open. “Fuck, it’s so fucking—hot in here—”

_I want to be yours. I want a home with you._

Briefly, she wondered if that dream had been as wishful as she’d thought. John had been exactly what she wanted him to be—just the color, just the shape, everything in him built to lure her and keep her there like the most perfect predator. It was easy to forget that she had never known that she wanted a man whose hair was dark and his eyes a little cruel until she had looked at John Seed. But now it was impossible to ignore; she pressed to him, craved him, this delicious anchor of hers.

He could be cruel, if he wanted—he’d considered drowning her to death. He’d been greedy to mark her skin forever with her sin. He’d littered his body with markings and scars, testaments to his devotion, just like he had done every other conversion.

 _Yes,_ she thought absently, against the stifling heat of the stinging shower and John’s own radiating warmth, feverish from the hallucinogen seeping out of him. _He is cruel. But maybe I—_

And then he murmured, against her ear, “Want you,” hazy and buzzing and warm. His fingers slid down between them, gliding along the curve of where she most wanted his attention, and she felt her breath hitch in her throat. He buried his face into her neck and sighed, pressing into her and eliciting in her a spark that traveled straight down her spine; and then, almost as though he wasn’t thinking too hard about it: “Would’ve—back in the forest—”

He cut himself off and his movements stilled, just for a second. Elliot tilted her head to look at him through her eyelashes and canted her hips to gain some friction against the heel of his palm; she wasn't bothering anymore to stifle the stuttered, half-breath-half-whimper that came out of her as slick pleasure pooled in her stomach, the feeling of his fingers dragging a delicious, heady burn through her. 

Elliot heard him swallow back a sound over the white noise of the shower. It was a wicked kind of thing, this watching John as she leaned down into him; watching the muscle in his jaw tense and flex just before he beckoned his fingers against her and bit out a swear between his teeth when her body tensed and arched prettily into his touch. Needy and wanting; just the way that he liked, she was sure.

“Would’ve what?” she prompted breathlessly. John’s lashes, long and darker still from the shower spray, flickered. He seemed to be weighing it in his head, the pros and cons of what he had been going to say, but Elliot was no longer in a place of wanting to wobble. No floating, no drifting between ethereal and corporeal—she didn’t want to have to wonder, to have to piece together what it was he was thinking with the crumbling threads she could scoop up.

He didn't answer her; instead, he dragged his mouth along the slope of her neck, teeth digging against her pulse point. Elliot moaned, choking the noise halfway out of her spitefully, because she wanted him to earn it, and he did it again—harder this time, less like he was testing and more like he knew that she wanted it. The sting rippled heady anticipation straight to her brain, sparking through that hazy fog in her mind.

She sighed, "John," just as he dragged his fingers out slowly, _torturously_ slowly, not enough to give her even half the friction she wanted and not so little that it didn’t make her suffer in the best sort of way. As soon as they didn’t return, but rather traveled the expanse of her abdomen, a quiet complaint slipped out of her; John kissed her, his tongue gliding against hers, his teeth nipping and biting as he dragged her leg up around his hip.

Everything felt like it was happening between breaths, between heartbeats, her pulse moving so sluggishly it was lava spreading through her body. _Stifling,_ so hot, too hot, too much, but John’s mouth over hers pushed and pulled the breath out of her, guided the currents of her like the moon. Elliot tried again, giving the words more punch on their way out, “You would’ve _what?”_

She thought that she knew what he was going to say, and she wanted to hear him say it, that he would’ve—

“Fucked you,” John managed out hoarsely, just as he rocked into her. “God, I—”

 _Yes,_ she thought; the word left her mouth in something close to an exhale, and she didn’t know if she was responding to what he’d said or to the way it felt like he’d set a wildfire going racing along her skeleton the second they connected. He managed out a half-moaned swear and shifted into a slower, more leisurely paced as he sighed, “I would’ve, El— _fuck_ , you’re so tight— _”_

Pleasure wrenched in her stomach and writhed, hot and wicked. John’s pace was halting; he was trying not to go too fast or too hard even though he wanted to, but then he said things like how he wanted to fuck her while she was covered in blood and—

And she felt _seen,_ and _wanted,_ and she thought this must have been how they did it: took all of the grit and gore of someone and worshipped it, like something holy.

 _Biggest fucking Peggy-killer this side of Hope County,_ he’d spat at her that day they’d found Waylon’s body. But now? Now, it was all, _so tight, El, want you, would’ve fucked you right there._

His hands grazed the bruises on her body before stopping at her hips again. He pulled back to get a good look at her, and then reached up, cradling her jaw with his left hand and dragging the pad of his thumb across her lip. A thrill crawled up her spine, hot and searing and latching onto her; she thought, _this magic is mine now, too,_ and she parted her lips obediently to drag him into her mouth just so she could watch John just about come unglued.

And never before had she felt like this, wicked with John’s eyes blown wide and dark with want as his gaze fixed on her mouth and moaned, “God, Elliot—”

She wanted to forget about Kian’s hands on her body, his mouth on her skin, his words ringing in her head. So she did; she indulged in the feeling of John’s breath trembling as her tongue flickered against the pad of his thumb and the way he hissed as his pace changed. 

“Should have,” Elliot managed out when his thumb slipped from her mouth so that he could press his hand against the wall by her head. She said it between dizzying, radiating pleasure dragging through her body, devouring her, dragging her further and further toward the edge. “Should have—fucked me then, John, I—”

 _“F-Fuck.”_ The swear left his mouth wrecked, his movements stuttering. “Fuck, that’s so— _filthy.”_

He stopped tempering himself. If he was doing it because he was worried about whatever injuries she’d sustained, she was glad that he’d stopped—each haphazard, frenzied connection of their bodies sent her rapidly hurtling towards her finish, his fingers digging and dragging against the parts of her that craved him the most. It wasn’t fair, really, that John could rumble a few dirty things about wanting to fuck her in the woods and get her so close: but he did, and she was, and that was the end of it.

She breathed out, “Close, John—I’m—”

“Liked that, did you?” He sounded awfully pleased with himself, even as each of his breaths were punctuated with a desirous sound. “Liked me telling you how badly I wanted to push that dress up and fuck you right there? You get s-so _—fucking tight_ when I say that—c’mon, El, let me hear those pretty noises—”

“Yes,” Elliot moaned, hazy with want, desperate and still trying to swallow some of it back, _so close so close so close._ “Yes, yes, I— _John—”_

John said something into her mouth; she couldn’t have said what it was, because all of the blood went rushing through her head the second her climax hit. There was a strange, suspended moment of nothing before it ripped straight through her, every neuron firing off rapidly as she buried her face into John’s neck and dug her nails in hard while the wave washed over her, wicked-hot and nearly too much.

Nearly, but not quite. John’s teeth on her lip dragged her back, and he moaned, “Holy shit, fuck _yes_ —fuck, El, I’m gonna—let me—”

He couldn’t quite get out what he was trying to say, but Elliot thought she knew; it wasn’t hard to _guess,_ anyway, considering the way he was gripping her like he’d fucking disappear if he didn’t. And she felt a little wild, a little wicked, only a vicious desire left before she hit empty, so she managed out, “Beg.”

John pulled back a little and let his gaze rake over her. His movements slowed, just enough that she could tell that he was pacing himself, holding back the same way he had that first time when she’d dragged him through his own climax. Though his eyes were blown nearly black, the clarity about them made her want to squirm—that she knew he wasn’t quite so high as he was before, that he was going to remember this.

“Wh—” The brunette swallowed thickly; his hands skimmed absently across her skin, like he didn’t need to really think about it to do it anymore, but that they did it of their own volition. “What?”

With that same kind of recklessness, Elliot knotted her fingers in his hair and said, “ _Beg_ to finish inside me.”

A short, breathless laugh barked out of him. He said, “Fuck you. I’m not—I _don’t—”_

Elliot squirmed, pulling on his hair until his lashes fluttered and he was leaning back into her on instinct. “You do now,” she replied silkily against his mouth. And then, in an attempt at graciousness: “Didn’t you want me to be loud, John? To _hear_ me?”

He groaned. “Y—Yes—”

“So _beg me,”_ she bit out, canting her hips against him and feeling his breath stutter and hitch, “and I’ll be as loud—”

“Fuck—”

“—as you want—”

“— _yes_ —”

“—tell you how much I _want_ it—”

“ _Please,”_ John moaned as he slotted his hips against hers, unable to hold still any longer. He made a low, wrecked sound, and by the time the adrenaline rush from hearing John Seed say _please_ to _her_ had hit her brain he was foregoing all pretense. “Please, El, let me finish inside you, I’ll—fuck—make you feel so good, baby, make you mine—”

Elliot kissed him, hard and punishing, and moaned “Yes—yes, John, so _good_ ,” against his mouth until he was driving into her like a man incensed, frenzied, each desperate dig of his fingers against the bruises in her skin delivering a different kind of delicious pain; and when he came, panting, _yes, fuck yes, don’t stop, El, please, fuck,_ she held onto him tighter.

Anything to feel whole. Anything to feel safe. Anything to forget, even for a moment.

“Don’t move,” John managed out unsteadily. “Don’t—Jesus, fuck, it’s so fucking hot in here.”

“Don’t know where I’d go,” she replied in a murmur. Her brain felt foggy now, delicious sliding down from her high, remembering the surge of delight she’d felt when John had said _please, El._ The water had since gone lukewarm, and she wasn’t sure she even got all of the blood out of her hair, but it didn’t matter; pleasant after-currents rippled through her, and all she could think about was how little of her brain was being spent on churning around the Family.

John’s mouth traced a bruise on her neck—either from him, or Kian; she didn’t know—and his breath slid across her skin.

“Viper,” he murmured huskily, admiringly. “Aren’t you?”

“You said it yourself,” she replied tiredly, eyes fluttering as the desperate need for sleep finally registered in her brain; no more adrenaline to keep pushing it away. “More devil than woman.”

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It was the second time waking up next to John, and the second time of having to try and brace herself for some kind of impact after.

That is to say, Elliot thought that maybe fucking John Seed felt a little bit like throwing herself off of a cliff, and so every time it happened—she thought, as though it had been more than twice—it was the same sensation of falling. The feeling prevailed over any other logic in her brain: upon waking, she thought very little of the sensation of his arm draped over her waist or his face buried into her hair and only of the sheer blast of _panic_ that raced through her.

 _I smell, I feel, I hear,_ she thought, closing her eyes tight, but when she did, she saw Kian—blood streaming down his face, gripping her jaw, _will you feel guilty about this too?_ And the panic shifted into dread, knotting tight and hard in her stomach.

She forced her eyes open. Sheer exhaustion had pushed her through a dreamless night, but that didn’t mean that her nightmares were confined to sleeping hours only.

When Elliot shifted, John stirred; his fingers skimmed up the back of her shirt, palm flattening at the spot between her shoulder blades, and she winced. _Everything_ hurt. _Everything_ ached. She wondered what was worse; nightmares, or this?

 _Definitely the nightmares,_ she thought, each breath a labor of her bruised and battered body. _Right? Has to be the nightmares._

“Stop moving,” John muttered against her head.

“I don’t know why you don’t get the concept of a twin bed,” she snapped. “Fuck, my body _hurts—”_

“Well.” He was clearly trying not to sound smug, and failing; she could feel his grin into her hair. “I do recall you spurring me on—”

 _Oh,_ she thought, reminded of their shared shower. _That._

A problem.

“Not from that, fuckhead.” She squirmed back from him, back pressing against the wall. “Feels like someone tried to curb stomp my ribs eighty times.”

“Probably did,” he replied. John tilted his head, wincing a little, and then nudged the blankets back from her body. His gaze was admiring. “Christ, you bruise easy, huh?”

“A fucking van _t-boned us_ in a truck that spit out pitiful, half-functioning airbags, _”_ she bit out, “and then I got tossed around like a ragdoll, so—yeah, I guess if you consider battery and assault “easy”, then—”

John’s hands came up to her face and he kissed her. It lacked the same kind of urgency that it’d had last night; this was John taking his time, savoring her, parting his lips against hers and sighing into the kiss as he carded his fingers through her hair. The gesture itself was so unexpected that Elliot could do nothing but reciprocate, and the breath hitched in her throat as he tugged her back against him—part in pain and part because of the way he did it, like he just couldn’t get enough of her.

“So ungrateful,” he said against her mouth, “after I gave you what you wanted _so badly_ last night.”

“I’m not the one who _begged,”_ Elliot replied sharply, “am I?”

John’s hand skimmed the slope of her hip, and he made a low noise, thumb digging past the top of her underwear to press lightly into a bruise that she thought his fingers had left. She sucked in a sharp breath as a familiar heat sprinted down her spine and squirmed.

“Worth it,” he replied after a moment, teeth catching her lip, “to have you say how much you wanted me in you.”

He flashed that half-cocked, shit-eating grin that she could feel against her mouth, and she swatted his hand away from her hip. There was, perhaps, a part of her that regretted goading him like that—that regretted spurring him on—but there was no point in lingering on it now. As much as John might want to. As much as, when he looked at her with those too-blue eyes, _she_ might want to.

Elliot opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, there was a soft, quick knock at the door. Boomer, curled up on one of her sweaters by the door, immediately pricked his ears and barked at the intrusion.

“Elliot?” It was Faith’s voice. She felt her stomach somersault, plunged into—well, it wasn’t _quite_ shame, but maybe a little bit of embarrassment, in the way that it was to have the little sister of the man you were currently entangled with knock on your door while you were still in bed.

“I’m—” Elliot sat up, slapping a hand over John’s mouth when she saw him start to say something. “I’m getting dressed, what is it?”

“Joseph wants to talk to you,” Faith called back, pausing. And then, perhaps with a bit more slyness than Elliot liked: “And John.”

 _Fuck fuck fuck._ The last thing she wanted was for Joseph to _know_. There was probably a ninety-eight percent chance that Joseph was going to be flashing that psychotic smile the second she walked in, knowing that she and John were—

“W—I’m coming,” she said, as John gripped her forearm and pressed his mouth to the pulse point on her wrist, letting his teeth drag there. She yanked her arm out of his grip and hissed, _“Stop_ , you fucker, or I’ll pick my teeth with your fucking bones.”

“Okay,” came Faith’s light-hearted reply. “See you soon!”

As soon as she heard the footsteps receding, she turned to John. “What the fuck does your brother want with me, John?”

John shrugged. “Contrary to what you may believe about me, I am not _entirely_ all-knowing.”

“As usual, you are stunningly unhelpful,” she muttered crossly, sliding out of the bed and over to her bag of clothes. Now, she _really_ felt it—each impact had been dulled by the adrenaline at the time, but as she shimmied into her jeans, every inch of her body screamed in pain and her vision fuzzed around the edges.

John had gotten out of bed as well, but he departed to the bathroom and returned with a bottle of aspirin, which he shook two pills out of and held in his palm for her.

“You might consider something with a higher neck,” he suggested lightly.

Elliot snatched the aspirin out of his hand and swallowed them dry. “My teeth,” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest, “your bones.”

“Just trying to be _helpful.”_

“Suggestion box is closed,” Elliot snapped. “Now—”

Her eyes flickered over him. It was very easy to disassociate John’s personality from his physical body, but harder when he was half-stripped-down in front of her, scars and tattoos on display and reminding her how intimately familiar she was becoming with them.

“Now put your clothes on,” she finally said, somehow managing to keep her voice mostly steady. “I want to get this done as fast as possible.”

The brunette flashed her a cheeky smile and gave her a two-finger salute that rang sardonic at best.

“Anything you want, baby.”


	18. even as a dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. What can’t be.”  
> ― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my friends! I am once again asking for your patience as I come to you with a chapter full of emotional manipulation and almost no physical plot movement! All of this felt important to dig into and though it may not be the most fast-paced (or smutty) chapter, I hope that you still enjoy it nonetheless. Drama abound as we are slowly but surely closing in on the end. 
> 
> I want to give a super special thank you to @shallow-gravy for listening to me whine and complain about this chapter as well as lend me their eyeballs so that I didn't go just fucking nutso trying to write this thing. As well, @lilwritingraven has been SO sweet, cheering me on and keeping my spirits up even when I think this was one of the harder chapters for me to get through; and everyone who comments, kudos, likes/reblogs depending on what platform you're on, thank YOU so so so much. It really keeps me going!
> 
> As always, my most beloved @starcrier put her eyes on this and let me feel less like I was going insane. I love you so much and thank you for loving my girl Elliot sm!!!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: almost none, though some descriptions of Elliot's recent actions, as well as some colorful threats and some poor decision making on John's behalf. This whole chapter is basically Elliot suffering and that's probably why it was so hard to write.

“We should get our story straight.”

John’s voice wrangled Elliot out of her brain. She’d been trying to mentally prepare herself for whatever mind games were about to commence, but John stepping in front of her to block her way into the chapel and speaking was enough to yank her right out of it.

“Get  _ what _ story straight?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Her gaze flickered to Boomer, waiting expectantly, and she made the quiet little motion for  _ sit _ ; he did, obediently.

“Our timeline,” John clarified, “for—”

“You know, for someone who insists his brother doesn’t scare him,” Elliot interrupted, “you sure act like you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar every time he wants to talk to you.”

The brunette’s mouth twisted into a grimace. His arms crossed, mirroring her own.

“I  _ don’t _ ,” John said, speaking slowly, “want Joseph to get the impression that because we are  _ romantically entangled—” _

“Please stop.”

“—that it somehow compromised the work I was doing with you before,” he finished.

“But it did,” Elliot pointed out mildly. “Or did you forget telling me about how long you’ve wanted to fuck me for?”

She saw, for a brief second in time, irritation spike in John’s expression. All this time it had been Elliot smothering him, stopping him from saying the words out loud—but there was something a little liberating about doing it herself, like she had discovered something sharp that had been hidden inside of her all along. It wasn’t useful enough to be used as often as she would have liked, of course; but that didn’t stop her from getting some satisfaction in seeing John’s expression clamp down because the control freak couldn’t stand the idea of her derailing his perfect plan.

(And maybe that had been what she really liked this little game they’d played, all along—the increasing frustration in his voice every time he’d cut in to her walkie talkie, like she could tell that he was losing control thread by thread.)

“I didn’t  _ forget.”  _ John managed to somehow sound both incredibly frustrated and nonplussed at the same time, like ambivalence was a tone of voice rather than an opinion that he could emulate. He continued, “I just think we should be clear about the timeline with each other.”

“Nothing’s unclear,” Elliot replied. “You’ve wanted to fuck me all along—”

“Well, now—”

“—and I finally let you,” she continued.

He sounded spiteful when he said, “Twice.”

“Twice,” she acquiesced, “but do we need to include details?”

John chewed on that for a minute. “Should,” he ventured, and he was clearly trying not to sound smug. “If it’s going to happen again.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think Joseph needs to know that.” And then, light-heartedly, “But if you think he does, we should include how you said please so  _ very _ nicely for me—”

“Unnecessary,” the brunette interrupted. “Fine. It happened twice, the nature of our relationship is...”

“Tenuous at best.”

“... But not without hope,” John concluded. It took every ounce of her strength not to roll her eyes so fucking hard that she passed out; because  _ yes _ , she did want to say,  _ I know John was good, sometime, somewhere inside of him, and that means maybe I can bring it back, and if he said that he’d go with me I’d let him. _

“Isn’t that right, El?”

Elliot sighed. She regarded him for a moment—grinning, handsome and boyish, flashing his teeth like the cat that had caught the canary.  _ And handsome. He’s handsome, too. _

“Whatever,” she relented, at last. “Is that all? Can we go in now? There are things I want to do with the day.”

As she reached around him for the door, John said, “So what are we?” and she groaned.

“ _ John.” _

“I just think that—”

“You are  _ ruining,”  _ Elliot told him, poking a finger into his chest, “the  _ mythos _ of whatever this is.”

John frowned. He looked like he wanted to say something; he looked like he wanted to say it and very  _ terribly,  _ but like he thought she might be mad if he did. Then again, Elliot had to consider that John said plenty of things that made her angry, and he did so knowing they would make her angry, and that there was no reason that he should start now.

“It shouldn’t be a mythos,” John said after a moment. “We’re…  _ Together, _ you know—”

Elliot fished the carton of cigarettes out of her back pocket and tapped one out, lighting it. John had stopped himself to watch her, his gaze sweeping over her before he grinned again, wolfish and pleased.

“Does it stress you out?” he asked.

“Baby,” Elliot deadpanned, “if stressing me out was an Olympic sport, you would be a gold medalist.”

John plucked the cigarette out of her hands after she took one drag, dropped it on the ground, and stomped it out, much to her chagrin. One wasted cigarette.

“You owe me,” she said.

“I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page when we go in there,” he reiterated. “Nothing about the nature of our relationship affected the time that you spent in my custody.”

She eyed him. Out of spite, she almost wanted to agree and then say something completely different once she was inside—just to make him squirm, and all for stamping out her cigarette. 

“Fine,” she relented, at last. “But that’s all we say about it. I don’t think anything else needs to be said, do you?”

For one second, John opened his mouth again. It was all Elliot could do not to  _ immediately _ groan; stupid, pretty John, who for some reason needed to constantly be talking, the same way a shark would die if it stopped moving. 

But then he said, “Sure,” and suspicion spiked high and hot in her brain. He leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers; the kiss was unhurried, but short, and succeeded in frying her brain pleasantly.

“Don’t try and distract me,” she snipped half-heartedly, even when she felt the blush crawling up her cheeks. He grinned as though to feign innocence, before he turned and opened the door to the chapel; when he stepped inside, it left her alone.

One blissful,  _ serene _ moment alone. It felt more and more like she was running short on those. It was probably intentional. Whatever it was happening between herself and John—whatever this  _ mythos _ really was—it was harder and harder to keep straight with him around her all the time, breathing her in and exhaling her out, hands and mouth and—

And if she just got  _ one more second _ —

Inside, Joseph said, “You don’t have the deputy with you?” and John made a noise like he was surprised she hadn’t followed right in. Elliot motioned for Boomer to stay before she stepped inside and closed the door behind her; the movement plunged her into the dim, cool light of the chapel, illuminated only by the cut-out of the Eden’s Gate star-symbol, slanting golden light across the floor. Everything else was dark. Like a womb, living and breathing and spitting out cultists.

“I trust you’ve gotten sufficient rest?” came Joseph’s next question, and it was clearly directed at her. Elliot made her way to the front of the chapel and stifled a sigh.

“Faith said you wanted to talk with us?” she prompted, and Joseph looked like he was trying not to smile; the corners of his mouth ticked upward for a moment as he watched her. He liked to do that—let a silence linger between them, let it fester for a moment until she thought she’d rather curl up and disappear than stay there any longer.

He finally spoke and said, “It’s come to my attention, Deputy Honeysett, that your relationship with our brother John has developed.”

‘Our brother,’ he said. Joseph talking like he was the fucking Pope made her molars grind.

Before she could remark on it, Joseph continued, “It would stand to reason, then, that you are intending to enter the End with us?”

_ I want a home with you. _

“Of course,” John said, just as Elliot said, “‘Reason’ is a funny choice of word for you,” and then their eyes met. John’s expression said  _ we’re supposed to be on the same team, _ but as far as Elliot couldn’t bite back instinct so easily.

She  _ knew _ John could be good. She  _ knew _ it, and yet he insisted on acting otherwise, and it just made her think maybe she had been some kind of exception and he really was, all this time, just  _ rotten. _

“I know that you’ve had a lot to process these last few days,” Joseph continued lightly. “The devastating loss of Hudson, having to purge all of that old poison concerning your last boyfriend…”

Elliot felt the panic wash over her in an instant. It was the same feeling that she had gotten with Kian, but the kicker here was that she’d volunteered that information to Joseph. He’d gone digging around in her brain, but she’d given him permission to have it.

_ I don’t want John to know,  _ something in her said frantically,  _ he can’t know. _

“Reconsider,” Elliot bit out venomously, “what you’re going to say next, Seed.”

A moment of silence lapsed between the three of them. John was watching her curiously, waiting, perhaps, for her to elaborate on her angry outburst. She wouldn’t. He’d be waiting until he was in his fucking grave and then some if he thought she was going to say anything about it.

“John,” Joseph said, glancing at the brunette, “I’d like a moment with our deputy.”

The brunette’s expression tightened. Something, just a  _ tiny little something, _ about that statement bothered John, Elliot could tell—though he said nothing about it, and instead swallowed back whatever it was, clearing his throat.

“That’s not necessary,” she insisted, looking between the two brothers. “John, it  _ isn’t.” _

_ Don’t. Don’t leave me alone with him. Please. I’m so tired, I’m so tired, I don’t want to do this anymore. Not with him. _

“I’ll be outside,” John said, but he said it to Elliot, not to Joseph, and it did so very little to inspire any confidence in her; that John thought he needed to explain to her that he would be close by only reminded her that there was something predatory about Joseph that  _ John _ didn’t like, either. 

As he went to move past her, she grabbed his wrist out of instinct—the pads of her fingers brushed the crescent marks that she’d left on him that night in the river, and the differences in the ways that she gripped him now felt monumental.

The moment lingered, suspended, between them. John reached up with his un-gripped hand and brushed some of her hair behind her ear.

“It’s only a few minutes,” Joseph offered, as though it were supposed to comfort her. It didn’t.

She dropped her hand from his wrist, and his hand drifted from her face, and he was heading back to the door before she could figure out if she wanted to pitch more of a fit or not.

When the door closed behind them and left Joseph and herself alone, in the eerie stillness of the chapel, Elliot took in a slow breath. The last time she’d been alone with Joseph, she’d been doing what she knew he wanted her to—confessing to the things that hurt, the prickly, sharp parts of her that stung the most on their way out. She’d grappled back a thread of her control that day, but what should have been a catharsis had just felt—

_ Dirty. _

“I know that you must be tired,” Joseph murmured, closing the distance between them. “You’ve been fighting for a long time, Elliot. Longer, I can say now with certainty, than before even us. Before this.”

_ Fuck you, _ she thought hatefully.  _ Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. You took everything from me, you wretched fucking man. _

“I am tired,” she relented, desperate to keep that tiny bit of Joseph’s favor if it just meant that he’d stop trying to pry her open all the time. “But that doesn’t—”

“The End is coming,” he interrupted, though with the slow, rich cadence of his voice, it often felt less like an interruption and more a gentle redirection, “whether you believe it or not. But let’s say, theoretically, that it isn’t. That I’m wrong.”

Elliot’s mouth went dry. She didn’t like hypothesizing theoretical situations, least of all with Joseph. “Okay...”

The man had closed the distance between them now; his eyes were fixed on her, the relentless, dauntless part of him that did not soften to his Fatherly persona. He lifted his hands, and it took everything in Elliot not to flinch back out of instinct—his fingers brushed where John’s had just moments ago, trailing the slope of her jaw, landing on the feverish bruise marks on her throat.

“We retrieved Kian’s body from the forest,” he murmured, his fingers not leaving her neck. He looked to be inspecting the bruises on her neck, at the corner of her mouth.

The scrutiny made her skin feel sickly-hot. “And?”

“You obliterated his face,” Joseph said plainly. “Crushed each bony structure on it, caved him in. His eyes barely stayed in his sockets by the time you were done with him.”

_ Do you feel guilty for what that man did to you? _

Elliot felt her stomach churn, the vicious nausea rolling around inside of her head. She could still feel Kian’s bones crumbling under each impact of the shotgun cold, dark metal, taste the arterial spray in her mouth. And just like that, she could feel Joseph digging his metaphorical claws in, cracking open her rib cage so he could stick his hands right into the gore of her.

_ Will you feel guilty about this, too? _

“It—” Elliot felt her brain swoon dizzyingly; for a second, the only thing keeping her anchored was Joseph’s feather-light touch. “It w-was—self-defense—”

“ _ I  _ know that,” Joseph murmured, “and  _ you _ know that, and John—even Jacob, and Faith, and the others. We all know that, Elliot. But your friends from the resistance? Mary May, Grace... Pastor Jeffries...” His voice trailed off. “Do you think they’ll understand, when they read the reports of what you did to that man? Of the trail of bodies you’ve left behind yourself?”

“H-He was going to  _ kill _ me,” and the words came out barely past a whisper; anymore volume and it would have been a wail. “ _ They  _ were—”

“Yes,” Joseph agreed, “and you mutilated his body well past the point of death.”

“He deserved it,” she managed out, “he deserved it, he—”  _ He was in my home, he touched my things, he pushed his way into my head, he took my Joey from me, she was the only good thing I had left and he took her. _

“I know.” Joseph’s breath fanned across her forehead. “I know, Elliot. I hope—”

He stopped himself, and then he pulled back so that their eyes could meet, his hands cradling her face. It was both an anchor and invasion, this incessant need of Joseph’s to touch her. It grounded her to reality, but it also rattled violently through her skeleton, aftershocks of an earthquake she’d been living through for the last week.

“What I mean to say is, I only hope  _ you _ understand,” he continued, his voice low, “this gift that we are giving you.”

_ I want a home with you. _

“Do you?” Joseph asked. “Understand?”

What  _ would _ Pastor Jeffries think? How would Mary May look at her? Sharky, and Grace—would they still like her spark?

Or was she ruined now, too, like everything else Eden’s Gate had touched?

_ Are you happy, Elliot? _

“Yes,” she managed out. “I do.”

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When the chapel door opened, John had been standing around outside for about ten minutes—enough time to  _ hate _ it, enough time to look at Boomer waiting patiently at the foot of the stairs and think,  _ fucking dog has better patience than I do. _

“We’re going,” Elliot said, moving down the steps. Joseph lingered in the doorway behind her.

John balked. Faith had said Joseph wanted to speak to both of them; she’d made it sound like there had been more for him to be a part of, and yet Joseph had just collected one-on-one time with Elliot for himself and that was it?

“We’re?” he asked. Her voice sounded thick. “To where? Joseph, didn’t you—”

The blonde walked past him, and with a single gesture of her hand, Boomer was trotting off after her. John watched her, and then looked back at his older brother; he was sure the confusion was written clear on his face, but true to his nature, Joseph let it linger for a moment before he said, “She requested a car to visit someplace important to her. I said it would be fine, if you went.”

“Where?”

“It didn’t feel pertinent to ask,” Joseph replied. John paused, and as soon as he turned to start walking after Elliot—and perhaps get more information than what it seemed his brother was willing to supply him with—Joseph said, “John?”

He stopped and turned to look at his brother, and said, “Yes?”

“The opportunity is slipping.” Joseph’s head cocked to the side, his gaze hardening. “Do not let your family down.”

John felt something—anxiety, perhaps, but probably more  _ dread _ —creep down his spine at Joseph’s words. He swallowed and nodded once before he started heading off again, the slow IV-drip of his older brother’s casual, cloaked venom seeping straight into the marrow of his bones.

Joseph’s voice rattled in his skull.  _ Tell me you can do this. _

_ You can’t have both,  _ Elliot’s mouth against his, voice teetering on something broken.

He gritted his teeth, catching up to Elliot as she pulled herself into the driver’s seat of a truck. 

_ I can. You’re mine, and I can have both. _

“Ready?” Elliot asked, having elaborated not at all on what was going on and only expecting that he would come along blindly. Well, she was right—to some extent, anyway, because here he was, knowing only one thing more than before and that was that Joseph’s patience was enduring, but running thin.

John flashed her a smile when she glanced over his way. 

“As ever.”

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It didn’t get any more clear where it was Elliot was taking him. Perhaps “taking him” was a bit of a stretch—he was going along because Joseph had insisted, and even if he hadn’t insisted it probably would have been his first choice of how to spend the afternoon anyway.

They were running out of time. That much had been made clear to him, either by Joseph or by Elliot’s itching to get out of the compound; pulled two ways, and only one of them was able to give—Elliot, with the proper amount of planting, guiding. 

John knew that he needed to stay focused. There could be no more lingering, favoring glances; she would need to be his, and he would have to make it happen. 

Fast.

The blonde turned the truck up a long, winding drive that took them further back into the wilderness of Hope County and parked in front of a house that he’d seen only once or twice before, and only in passing; he’d even considered reaping it for himself, at one point, but it was far out and small enough that it would have been more of an inconvenience than it was worth.

“So,” he said, when she put the truck in park and pulled the keys out of the ignition, “where is this?”

It was a small house, but not as small as most houses in Hope County; by all accounts, the house was probably considered  _ upper class _ —the snob in him wanted to scoff audibly even as the thought considering how fucking incredible that statement alone was—but the two-story ranch house screamed  _ Gothic South  _ at him, even though he wasn’t entirely sure where it was where Elliot’s parents hailed from.

All of the lights in the house wereoff; the wisteria climbing the trellis that arched over the pathway had just finished blooming, and some of its perfume still lingered; ivy climbed up the elaborate railing of the top front porch, and the garden had clearly been  _ meticulously _ well-kept.

“My mom’s,” she replied after a moment, sliding out of the driver’s side and closing the door. She sounded more put-together now; whatever had transpired between herself and Joseph had shaken her, but only temporarily. She’d stuffed it down, locked it away somewhere far away from him.

_ Oh,  _ John thought, feeling that little thrill of delight he got every time he thought Elliot might be about to let him in and under and through.  _ Mom’s house, hm? Interesting. _

Boomer leaped from the back without waiting for the tailgate to get dropped and raced excited circles around Elliot as she made her way up the bricked path. He barked once, twice, and then Elliot lifted her hand and he quieted just before she gestured for him to go and he took off running. 

“I drove past this place when I first came back,” John said as he followed. “Your mom likes gardening, huh?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Elliot sighed, lifting one of the flower pots by the front door to fish a key out from underneath. There was something bitter and a little humorous as she added, “Scarlet Honeysett would  _ never _ lift a hand to garden,  _ except _ —” And here the blonde lifted a finger quite dutifully, that little Southern twang peeking through. “For her rose bushes. Nobody goes around touchin’ her rose bushes.”

John glanced around the front porch. The steps up were lined with the aforementioned bushes, tiny scalloped fencing keeping them from being in the way of foot traffic while still on perfect display.  _ Ah,  _ he thought absently,  _ the neuroses. _

Elliot unlocked the door, nudging the front door open with her foot and stuffing the key into her pocket. John followed her inside, glancing around in the late-afternoon light; the polished dark wood floors, the carefully placed decorations, plush foyer rug, elegant painting on the far wall leading past the stairs.

It was luxe, to say the least. A portrait hung on the wall closest to the door, a photo of a young woman and her blonde look-alike toddler. John thought that it was the kind of thing that you only saw in the home of a woman who put her daughter into pageants and drank martinis at ten in the morning. 

“Elliot Honeysett,” he began, with no shortage of needling glee, “are you  _ rich?” _

She looked at him over her shoulder. “ _ I _ certainly am not,” she told him. “My  _ mother, _ however, is a trust fund baby, likely has not worked a single day in her life. Papa Graves was a retired jockey—made a lot of money, real quick, invested it, retired...”

Her voice trailed off and she walked past him to the room on the right, fiddling around with something past his line of sight. He picked up a frame on one of the side tables; it was a young blonde girl, grinning ear to ear, sitting atop a buckskin horse, her fingers tangled into its dark mane,

“You like horses?” John called.

As if to clarify, she replied, “Animals.”

Something in the next room clicked. For a second, John’s brain panicked;  _ a gun, _ he thought, a brief second of considering that Elliot had brought him here to—

And then the music started to play. It was older music that didn’t quite suit his picture of Elliot—the same girl that had blasted Guns’N’Roses on their way out from the ranch—but dreamy. Hazy. The perfect kind of music to suit the golden light of the late afternoon slanting through the gauzy curtains framing French windows. For a second, John thought he could forget himself: she had let him in, to the most vulnerable part of her, this place littered with photos and monuments to Elliot as a child, Elliot as a girl, Elliot before any of this.

Joseph hadn’t gotten this. Nobody had gotten this—not Joseph, and not her ex-boyfriend, and not anyone. Not anyone except for him.

_ See the pyramids along the Nile; watch the sun rise on a tropic isle. _

Next was a gentle  _ clink. _ It sounded like ice cubes in a glass. John moved down the hallway, picking up another frame—what he could only presume to be young Elliot, perched atop the shoulders of a red-haired man, grinning like a scoundrel at the camera.

He could hear the sound of liquid pouring a room over. As he walked, he realized the table—and the walls—were covered with photos of this man, this red-haired stranger, freckles covering his face. He was handsome. His eyes looked familiar, too.

_ Just remember, darling, all the while, you belong to me. _

“John,” Elliot said from the sitting room—what an absurd thought; Elliot Honeysett, in a  _ sitting room _ , and that’s what it was, a  _ sitting room, _ “what are you doing?”

“Learning about you,” John replied. “Your parents left with the resistance?”

There was a pause. He thought that he knew the answer—the only pictures of the man whose eyes were mirrored by Elliot’s own were from when she was quite young. Maybe too young to even remember?

“Mama did, yeah,” Elliot replied. He heard a match striking in the room next to him. She didn’t elaborate on her father; everything in John was  _ itching _ to pry, to slide just under her skin and figure out what was going on in that brain of hers. Per usual, her decision to remain tight-lipped concerning just about everything that held any emotional bearing on her proved the biggest obstacle.

_ I'll be so alone without you. _

John rounded the corner back into the living room. Elliot had started a fire in the fireplace, kicked off her shoes, and in her hand was a drink; she looked  _ tired _ , neck still mottled with bruises, but more relaxed than he thought he had seen her in a long time. Even more relaxed than when she was sleeping.

“Didn’t even make me a drink,” he tsked, walking behind the couch to the bar cart. “Just pulled me out here for a little vacation, did you? We could  _ visit.” _ His gaze slid to her, still perched on the couch with her back to him. “About whatever you’d like.”

“Just wanted to get out of the compound. Felt like I couldn’t breathe in there.” She waved her empty hand in a vague gesture, as if to indicate he was welcome to help himself. “You really don’t stop talking, do you?”

“It’s my job,” John replied, “and you’ve forbidden me from using my mouth otherwise.”

“Oh,” Elliot drawled as he idled around the back of the couch, taking in every meticulous detail of her mother’s living room, “so all I had to do was  _ forbid _ you and you’d stop doing shit?”

A short laugh billowed out of him. It was so strange to have Elliot like this—was this how she had been with Joey? With the other deputies, with her friends? What she was like before that pesky ex-boyfriend of hers?

_ Maybe you'll be lonesome too, and blue. _

John walked around the side of the couch and sat next to her, regarding her amusedly. She side-eyed him like she didn’t want to exert the effort of turning her head all the way to look at him; when he reached up to brush his fingers along her jaw, she only tilted her head out of his reach for a moment before relenting.

“Might not have worked before,” he suggested. “You’ve definitely gotten more  _ persuasive.” _

“Ah.” She arched a brow at him loftily, letting him tilt her face so that she was facing him, and took a sip of her drink. “Maybe your brother is rubbing off on me. After all, romantic coercion isn’t really your  _ style _ , is it, John?”

He felt his mouth sour at the words. Dropping his fingers from her chin, he instead lifted the drink from her hand; though she relinquished the glass readily, he did see her eyes narrow, just a little. “You just can’t resist, can you?”

He waited for the bite; a part of him anticipated it now, sat patiently, eagerly for the quick-strike of venom. It had become so intrinsic to their day-to-day that he couldn’t tell if he liked it more when she was prickly and headstrong or if he liked it when she was sighing his name like a prayer.

Probably the latter.

The blonde feigned innocence. “Resist what?”

John took a sip of the drink. It was a vodka soda—strong, burning on its way down. Maybe her drink of choice? Or someone else’s. “Picking a fight with me.”

“You do have an exceptionally punchable face,” Elliot acquiesced. And then, as though to soften the blow: “But you have lovely long eyelashes.” She smiled, angelic. “Like a lamb.”

“Fuck you,” John snapped.

“You can,” she replied idly, “if you  _ beg. _ ”

John felt a flare of something—maybe delight, maybe  _ shame _ —red-hot and searing in his chest at her nonchalant words. He wanted to stay focused; this was the perfect opportunity to pry more out of her, to really  _ know _ her and figure out exactly what it was that made her tick, what got those little draconian gears in her head churning.

And they  _ were _ draconian—after that little show she’d put on with Joseph, he thought maybe Elliot was just a bit more wicked than she liked to let on.

Regarding her for a moment, John set the glass back in her hand, the burn of the alcohol still lingering in the back of his throat. She looked comfortable, draped against the couch; before, being in the same room as him put her on edge, teeth grinding and eyes wild.

“Liked that?” he asked, forcing his voice to lightness,  _ digging. _ “Having me beg for you?”

“Well,” Elliot said demurely, “who wouldn’t like to hear you begging for something, you smug fucker?”

He bit back his knee-jerk retort and instead willed his words out. “You really are  _ filthy _ then, aren’t you, Deputy Honeysett?”

Elliot took a swallow of the drink and looked as though she were measuring something, weighing the pros and cons of it in her head. In a fluid motion that must have cost her quite a bit of labor considering the current state of her skeleton, she swung one leg over his lap and settled herself there; straddling him, one hand flattened and smooth against the fabric of his shirt, the other holding the glass and draped over the back of the couch.

“I suppose,” she said, her eyes flickering over his face, “that you’re going to offer to cleanse me of my sins?”

“You’re a quicker study than you let on,” he replied, grinning. “You’ve confessed, but you’re hardly  _ clean. _ ”

“You should hear yourself.” Elliot’s voice was clipped coming out of her mouth, even as John’s hands came to her hips and tugged her down more firmly against his lap. Her fingers undid one of the buttons on his shirt. “ _ ‘You’re hardly clean’. _ You sound so fucking stupid—”

“Let me baptize you,” John insisted. He tried to stuff away his irritation at her words, but it was hard to—even when the sharpness of her words was punctuated by a kiss, her lips parting silkily against his as she sighed, the sharp bite of the vodka chasing the warmth of her mouth. Joseph’s low, murmured threat sat heavy in his chest. “Let me—”

“Drown me?” she said with no absence of venom, even when she said it against his mouth. “Or was that just a one-timer?”

“It’s  _ different,” _ he snapped. His hands slid beneath the hem of her long-sleeved shirt, tracing the dips and curves of her before splaying against her spine. “It’s different when you  _ choose _ .”

She sighed; for a moment, John thought she was going to slide off of him, but she stayed, shifting idly on his lap and making the temperature of his body spike.  _ Wicked, wretched viper, _ he thought, but it was  _ affection _ blooming in his chest.  _ Wicked and wretched, but mine. Legally bound to me, and all mine. _

Besides; where was she going to go, after all of this? She didn’t seriously think she was walking out of Hope County like nothing had happened.

“You gave Joseph what he wanted,” he continued, feeling a little spiteful even as he kept his hands in the slope of her hips. “How’s it feel, knowing that?”

Elliot’s mouth twisted in a grimace. His words had sucked the wind right out of her sails; he saw the impact on her face, meteoric in its destruction.

She said, “John, don’t—”

“I  _ will _ ,” he insisted, watching her take another dutiful swallow of the alcohol in her glass, “and you  _ did. _ You gave him exactly what he wanted, after spending all this time insisting you were going to kill him the second you got a chance to. You’ve had a chance. We all know what you did to Kian; all it would take is what, ten minutes alone with him? So, I’ll say it again,  _ how—” _

“Worse,” the blonde interrupted, her voice thick with an emotion that John couldn’t quite pin down, “than giving  _ you _ what you want.”

_ Yes yes yes,  _ the monster inside of him chanted. He could feel it writhing just beneath his proverbial fingers; so close to sticking the wings of her little butterfly, that special thing that she didn’t want him to have or know.  _ Yes, all mine, give it to me, I deserve it. _

The air felt thick, molten-hot and bubbling between them until he thought he was going to be dizzy from trying to breathe something so oxygen-thin. He could feel the flutter of Elliot’s pulse, unsteady and hammering, against his chest: not the heartbeat of an apex predator, but that of prey, snagged and caught and  _ his. _

John pressed his mouth to the slope of her neck, tightening his grip on her; his tongue traced the marks left there just below her jaw, and then he murmured, “Tell me how it feels to give me what I want, El.”

Elliot’s free hand had tangled into his hair, knotting there and gripping just a little tighter at his words.

“Good,” she managed out. Her voice barely broke the sound barrier of a whisper; that single word alone gave John a vibrant surge of triumph in his chest, billowed the breath right out of him. But when he pulled back to look at her, she finished off the rest of the vodka and set the glass on the side table before she plunged on, “I had a dream the other night.”

A brief pause dragged the silence on, with only the music playing absently in the background as she righted herself on his lap.

“It was after my walk with Faith,” Elliot continued. “You were there, and—it was just a stupid dream, but—”

“Dreams can be prophetic,” John said, because whatever she was unraveling was making her upset, and he  _ wanted _ it; that little tremble in her voice,  _ so sweet so sweet, _ the same kind of sweetness he’d wanted to taste that night he’d first gotten his hands on her.

When he opened his mouth to continue to encourage her, she slapped her palm over it and said, “Shut up or I’m going to lose my train of thought.”

John made a muffled noise of acquiescence. Elliot dropped her hand from his mouth and took in a short, sharp little breath.

“You were there, and you kept saying things like… That you wanted to be—mine,” she explained, and this whole time she hadn’t been looking at him, but she did now. “That you wanted a home with me, that we would—after Kian, we would leave Hope County and for a second—I fucking—everyone, and everything, it’s all gone to shit and for one fucking second when you were saying that I didn’t—I didn’t feel—”

_ So close,  _ John thought, watching her try to work around the words that she wanted to say but that fought against her entire being to come out.  _ I just need to hear it. That’s all I need. _

“Alone,” Elliot finished softly.

It was the perfect opportunity; Joseph had made it clear that they weren’t going to be waiting to finish off the Family to retreat for the End, and that meant that John only had so much time to bring Elliot around.  _ This _ was the moment that he had to take advantage of, to tell her about their marriage and hope for the best.

“It wasn’t,” John said after a moment. “A dream, I mean.”

The blonde stared at him for a moment. Her expression was guarded. “What wasn’t?”

“That night that you came back from your walk with Faith,” he began, “you weren’t feeling well, and I walked you back to the bunkhouse—”

“Uh-huh.”

“—and I told you that I didn’t want you to be alone anymore—”

“John.”

_ It’s fine, _ he thought, even when Elliot’s expression flattened and emptied out,  _ it’s fine, it’s fine. _

“—and that after all this was done, I would leave with you, and I wanted a home. With you.”

Elliot blinked. A few moments passed. Surprisingly, there was no fury radiating off of her; she looked blank, like she was still processing and taking in all of this information. Like maybe it hadn’t quite hit her yet.

John opened his mouth, very deliberately, to proceed and inform her of the next part—the completely fine and totally normal agreement to get married when Elliot said, “So you lied to me?”

His mouth closed. “Sorry?”

“I asked you about it,” she began, and  _ now _ she was biting the words out, “the next morning. In the chapel. Jacob was there, and I asked you if something happened—”

“—less like it  _ happened—” _

“—and you said _,_ _John,_ that I _walked myself_ to the bunkhouse and went to sleep.” Her fingers had fisted into the front of his shirt now, gripping, as if she were preparing for him to try and squirm out from underneath her. “I fucking _knew_ you weren’t telling me the truth, I fucking _knew_ it because my gun was on the table and I’d never fucking put it there to go to sleep, you stupid fuckhead—”

“El,” John said, lifting a hand, though he didn’t know why; maybe in an effort to soothe her, maybe to block any incoming blows, but Elliot smacked his hand out of the way.

“You fucking  _ weasel—” _

“Elliot, listen to me!”

_ Bad, _ John thought, and he hadn’t even told her about the part of this that was the most legally binding, the part of this that didn’t make her a Honeysett at all anymore but a  _ Seed. _ All of that softness from before had evaporated in the heat of her rage.  _ Bad, so fucking bad, fuck I’m fucked fuck. _

“I’m gonna fucking dig the decay out of your teeth with a hunting knife, you lying piece of shit,” Elliot snapped. “You saw what I did to Kian, huh? I let you  _ fuck _ me, and you  _ lied _ to me—”

“I was—”

“—fucking rotten through and through—”

“Elliot,” John managed out, scrambling for something as he ducked an otherwise well-timed blow; he snagged her wrists, both of them, to stop her from landing any kind of hit. “I was  _ embarrassed,  _ okay? When you came in the next day and you didn’t remember, I—freaked out. Jacob was there, and I thought you’d kill me if I didn’t tell you, and also that you’d kill me if I said it front of Jacob, and I didn’t want to say it in front of him  _ anyway _ because it was about how I was going to leave with you rather than stay with them!”

Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth pressed into a thin, hard line. It was a  _ lie _ —a big fucking lie, in a lot of ways, but most importantly a big lie-by-omission, but though he knew it John thought certainly there was no fucking way in Hell he was going to bring that part up to Elliot now, too.

_ She’s clearly emotionally fragile, _ he reasoned,  _ I should wait until a better moment. _

“Why’d you want me to get baptized then?” she snapped. “If you were planning on leaving with me?”

“Because,” John said slowly,  _ come on come on come on, _ “Joseph—knows about us, and it would be suspicious. If you didn’t.”

Elliot stared at him.  _ “And?” _

“ _ And,” _ he insisted, “I planned on telling you in the car on the way out of the compound that night, and then we got hit, and we went on Kian’s fun little nightmare carnival ride, and—”

“Shut up.” Elliot yanked her wrists out of his grip and passed a hand over her face exhaustedly. John  _ wanted _ to keep talking—it was instinct to want to weave the most elaborate tale that he could in the face of Elliot’s fury—but he did as she said, keeping his mouth shut as she processed whatever it was she had taken in.

Her hand dropped from her face, and she stared at a spot on the wall over his head for a minute before she sucked her teeth and said, “You don’t fucking lie to me, John.”

“I—”

“You don’t fucking lie to me,” Elliot reiterated again, “because if you do, I  _ will _ find out, and I will make you fucking suffer.”

John regarded her warily. He knew that he needed to tell her. He knew that he should, because if this was any indication to how she was going to handle it, the full truth would be astronomically worse. It would be best to get it out of the way, let her process it, and maybe by the end she’d have come around to the picture he’d paint of them, together, as the End crept in; safe and in the bunker and—

“Okay,” he replied, “no lying.”

“No fucking lying.”

“Got it.”

“And if you do—”

“Skeleton pulled out of my body,” John supplied, lowering his hands hesitantly back to her hips. She eyed him through her lashes for a moment before she seemed to relax a little, sucking her teeth and crossing her arms over her chest. As each second ticked by that she didn’t make good on her violent promises of emergency tooth surgery, John felt more and more confident that he had assuaged the monster and reached up to gently unlace her arms. She balked at first, and then relented after another few heartbeats; when she allowed him to pull her arms around his neck, Elliot let out a soft little exhale, like she’d been holding her breath.

He said, trying for lightness, “I like when you get scary.”

“Did you mean it?” she asked, ignoring his little playful remark. When John looked at her expectantly, looking for some elaboration, she took in a breath and said, “About... leaving?” And then, with concerted effort: “With me?”

_ Soft _ —she was so soft, right then and there, and only for him. It was in moments like this when John wanted to drag her down into him, kiss her until his lungs ached, until their breath mixed and intermingled; to capture something like this and keep it his and his alone, forever.

He’d tell her. He’d tell her when things were better—when she wasn’t so emotionally raw, when she hadn’t lost so much so quickly, and when she’d have a more level head about it. She’d feel safer, more secure, with this little white lie; and then he’d tell her about the End again, once things had quieted down for a few days, and explain the importance of having her by his side. As his wife.

“Yeah, El,” he replied. “I meant it.” And then, because she was staring at him with  _ those _ eyes—wary, cautious, guarded—he took her face in his hands and said, “I’m yours.”

“Don’t,” she managed out, and now her voice was  _ really _ wobbling, “don’t fucking lie to me again, John Seed.”

_ She’ll see that I did this for us.  _

“I won’t.” And technically, sort of, it was true—he wasn’t going to tell her another lie  _ now _ that she’d just said not to do it again. Unless she asked again. But she wouldn’t. So it was sort of like he was doing exactly what she wanted, wasn’t it? 

Elliot’s forehead brushed his. She let out a sharp exhale. “I don’t have anything left,” she said after a second, “anymore.”

He pressed his mouth to hers in a kiss—luxuriated in, drenched himself in it, indulged in the feeling of her leaned into his touch.

“You have me,” he said against her mouth. “You know that.”

“Yes.” Elliot’s voice was an exhausted murmur; her eyes fluttered shut.  _ Got you, _ John thought, dragging his thumb along the slope of her cheekbone, and she said, “I know.”

_ Got you, hellcat. _


	19. messy hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And now I'm standing in the sunlight  
> And I can't bear the sight of you  
> Oh, my lover  
> What's on your mind?  
> You're caught between two ways of life  
> I'll wait for you to find the light  
> One day we will reconcile  
> But that, we'll have to wait this time"
> 
> — Ursine Vulpine, "And So My Heart Became Void"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to keep these notes brief just because the chapter is quite a hefty one! We finally get some plot movement, a look into how Elliot got her mantra to Keep Going Anyway mantra, and boy howdy if you thought things were bad before just fucking wait.
> 
> I have so many people to thank and I just don't know how to express my gratitude. @shallow-gravy, you are a pure angel and I just adore you so much. Thank you for being so wonderful and for cheering my girl on always, no matter what! @lilwritingraven ilysm!!! You are so sweet and I just don't think this chapter would have happened without you.
> 
> And of course, absolutely none of this fic would be possible without @starcrier's unending love and support. The amount of MEMES, the amount of screenshots and meltdowns and in general just fuckery she puts up with nonstop is remarkable and I honestly believe that without her support we wouldn't have gotten where we are today!!!
> 
> I anticipate there is, perhaps, one or two chapters left of Ancient Names. Thank you everyone who has supported, even by a single like or kudos or comment; this community is so incredible and I am so so so grateful for every friend I have made. <3 Please, feel free to come find me on tumblr under the same username, @proudspires, to join in on the tomfoolery!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: **explicit sexual content** ; they bang it out. Mentions/depictions of suicide (after the fact, if that changes anything). Unreliable narrators abound. I think that's all, but if there's anything I missed please let me know.

The U.S. Marshal arrives ahead of schedule.

That is to say, nobody is ready for him. Everyone seems a little nervous. He’s familiar with the area—“Familiar _enough,”_ Whitehorse says, and Elliot thinks she can sense a bit of disdain in his voice; people don’t take well to outsiders traipsing around like they own the place, and Cameron Burke certainly carries himself with an amount of confidence that might come off as arrogant.

“Hey,” he says, when she passes him in the hallway, “you’re the rookie, huh?”

She’s already tired of being called _rookie—_ Rook is fine, she supposes, because she likes the way it makes her sound like the chess-piece, the bull-dozer, straightforward and brutal—but she nods, clearing her throat and holding out her hand. “Elliot.”

Burke shakes her hand. There’s a bright, easy grin on his face. “Yeah, I read about you, Honeysett,” he tells her, and for a second her stomach drops; the shame rises up in her throat like a second wave of exhaustion, but he plunges on, “you fuckin’ killed it at the Academy. Flying colors, everyone tells me.”

Relief floods her system. “Tried, anyway,” she says, unaccustomed to compliments regarding her work and more accustomed to dodging questions about why Whitehorse had to think twice about letting her on. “It was—I like the work. Of training, I mean. School. I’ve always liked school.” _Fuck,_ she’s rambling and she can tell—she’s rambling because she’s nervous he’s going to ask, but Burke watches her for a moment.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” he says after a brief pause. “This place could use some new blood. Kinda dusty, don’tcha think?”

Elliot nods. It’s hard not to smile when he’s flashing his teeth boyishly, when he sticks a toothpick in his mouth and winks at her before he sets off. It _is_ kind of dusty, in Hope County, she thinks—and she likes it, this little stretch and slice of home, but it does need new blood. Once they clear the cultists out, it’ll be like new; and then her life will really begin.

She’ll really start over.

Joey doesn’t like him much. “Sounds like a prick,” she says that night over takeout, her legs draped across Elliot’s lap.

“I like him,” she says, fishing her chopsticks around in Joey’s takeout box for a spare bite of broccoli. “He was... Nice. To me.”

“Oh?” Joey cocks a brow at her. “You had a little chat with our friend the U.S. Marshal?”

“Just in the hallway,” Elliot replies quickly, “on my way out today, I passed him. He said he read my file.”

Joey isn’t staring at her, but she doesn’t need to be for Elliot to know that she’s listening. She’s digging around in her noodles for something when she makes a low, quiet noise of inquisition, as though to say, _is that so?_ , because she knows what that usually entails.

“He just mentioned I got good marks,” she murmurs after a moment. “At the Academy.”

“Well, you did,” Joey says. Elliot huffs out a short little laugh and smiles.

“I know. Just nice to be _recognized_ for my _greatness_.” She crinkles her nose. “Whitehorse just kind of looks at me like he’s worried I’ll fire off.”

 _“Oh,_ Elliot! So strong, so smart, so fast, so capable of shooting a man on foot or by vehicle!” Joey wails dramatically. “Your hand in marriage, I beg it of thee!”

Elliot rolls her eyes and shoves Joey’s legs off of her lap, stretching and coming to a stand. “Yeah, yeah, fuck you.”

“Not before marriage, though,” her friend intones somberly. “Joseph “The Father” Seed wouldn’t have any pre-marital fucking in his domain.”

“I don’t think he’s as stiff on that as everyone thinks he is.” Elliot walks into the kitchen and uncorks the bottle of wine, pouring herself a new glass. “Aren’t cults supposed to be weird about that kind of thing?”

She can hear Joey scoff in the living room. “You’re going to be with us tomorrow. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“Oh, great idea! ‘Hi, The Father? Do you fuck, or nah?’ He won’t be expecting that at all.”

“Perfect. See how Burke feels about that pro-strategy.”

Elliot laughs and settles herself back on the couch, holding the glass of wine in both of her hands; the fragrance of it swims in her head pleasantly. Tomorrow they take the U.S. Marshal down to the compound and finally root the Seeds out of here. For good.

She says lightly, “Anyway, I want to get tomorrow done as fast as possible.” A little sigh escapes her.

“Things will finally get back to normal.”

  
  


Burke’s hands are around her throat and he slams her up against the wall with a vicious noise.

And then he sees her— _really_ sees her—and he drops his hands from her neck to grip her shoulders instead as he says, “Fucking Christ—Rook, I’m so sorry, fuck, I thought—”

Elliot coughs. Her lungs strain with each movement; every bone in her body feels bruised, and something _slimy_ crawls up and down her spine when she thinks about the way Joseph leaned in close to her in the helicopter and said, _no one is coming to save you._

“Burke,” she manages out, her voice hoarse, “they took Joey—they f-fucking—”

“This shit is all fucked,” Burke says. “I had no idea. _We_ had—”

Everything in her is vibrating with a strange kind of hunger. It’s like she’s _itching_ for something, but she can’t quite figure out what it is—movement, maybe, or a purpose, a task. It had been one thing to crawl her way out of the helicopter and start running blindly, but now she’s stationary, and in a trailer, and Joey is gone and she almost can’t think straight.

“Rookie,” Burke says firmly, but not unkindly, “with me.”

Her lashes flutter and she realizes she’s been zoning out. “Y—Yeah, I’m—here—I’m—”

And then she’s gasping, _heaving_ for a lungful of air. All of a sudden, the ability to take a breath is gone. Her body’s normal functions have flown out the window. Her vision fuzzes around the edges and she thinks, _fuck fuck fuck, don’t fucking do this, please, fuck, not right now, get it together._

_No one is coming to save you._

Burke grabs her hand and plants it right on the side of his neck. His pulse beats—fast, but steady, in the complete opposite of the stuttering arrhythmia of her own heart. He’s breathing hard, but his eyes are clear and his movements assured.

“With me?” This time it’s a question, and she’s taking breaths at the same time he is so she nods.

“Yeah,” she replies, “yeah.”

“Good.” He pulls away from her and gestures for her to follow as he heads further in. “Check the room.”

She does. It’s empty. Eden’s Gate scripture decorates the walls, photos of the Seed family staring at her unflinchingly from behind glass panes of photo frames.

“Clear,” she reports, when she remembers to, and finds Burke standing in what appears to be the main living room of the trailer. The lines of his face are hard, unforgiving, and she can feel the urgency radiating off of him as he scrambles to pull together a plan.

“We’re gonna put these fucking psychos behind bars, Rook,” he says, pointing at a picture frame sporting a portrait taken of the Seeds. Elliot can’t stand to look at them. To think that she’d met John in a bar and—even _considered_ —

“Every _single_ one of them,” the Marshal reiterates as he rips the photo frame off of the wall and drops it on the floor, crushing the glass beneath his boot on his way over to the window. “We’re gonna—”

There are voices outside. Dread crawls up her spine; she can feel it latching on, sinking its teeth into her, gripping.

Burke shoves an automatic rifle in her hands.

“Eyes,” he barks out, back to business as he creeps toward the door of the trailer. “There’s a truck out there. You ready to fuckin’ rumble?”

She grips the cold metal. She wants to say, _I don’t know if this is a good idea,_ because the edges of her are bleeding and blending in with everything else, and she’s having a hard time thinking about anything other than the texture of the carpet under her booted feet, but it helps to have something to hold onto.

Burke turns to her, crouched by the door, and his hand drops on her shoulder.

“Hey,” he says, “we're gonna bolt for that truck and hope it starts. Cover me."

"There's hardly any ammo in this thing," Elliot tells him, a note of panic rising in her voice as more people can be heard gathering outside, shouting to check the trailer. "What happens when—"

"I told you, kid, I read up on you. I know you were that small-town, All-American girl hitting soft lobs in the batting cage once," Burke tells her. "You'll figure out a use for the gun if you run out. And Rook?”

Elliot waits, and grips the cold metal slowly going lukewarm under her hands, flicking the safety off. “Yeah?”

The Marshal gives her shoulder a squeeze. “The _second_ you think you can’t anymore,” he says, “you dig and keep going anyway. No matter what. Give ‘em your teeth if you have to. Got it?”

She nods without thinking about it, because the words feel good— _if you can’t, keep going anyway. Dig dig dig._ It reminds her of a poem she had read once.

_What do we do with grief? Lug it; lug it._

“Good.” Burke drops his hand from her shoulder and gets ready to push the door open. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  
  


There’s not a lot of detail to recall of the next few moments. She’s aware of voices, and gunfire, and the rhythmic, steady movements that she falls into. _Aim, fire, drop, reload, aim, fire,_ rinse and repeat, until the torturous drag of time has her hauling herself into the truck while bullets whizz and clink off of the metal. The second she’s sitting, and not moving, and not breathing, her muscles start screaming; pain blooms behind her eyes.

Burke sends the tires shrieking as he speeds down the highway. He says something, but it’s hard to hear over the rush of wind from the open window, over the shouts of voices and sounds of gunfire echoing in the still, dark night. Elliot falls into a rhythm again— _lean, aim, fire, pull back, reload, and again and again_ —while the Marshal drives over barricades and nearly throws her out of the truck.

“Nice fuckin’ shot, kid!” he says over the noise, just as the sound of an airplane rattling above them makes him lean over the steering wheel as he drives. “Fucking—you’re telling me they have _God damn air support? Fuck!”_

“Burke,” Elliot says, because they’re rapidly approaching a bridge with a truck ahead of them and the airplane hasn’t let up, “Burke—the _bridge—_ ”

“Yeah, I fuckin’ see it,” he grits out, fingers gripping the wheel. “Hold on, Rook.”

He punches it. He’s going to try and get around the truck and across the bridge. But it’s not enough; the truck ahead of them swerves, stops him from being able to speed past and keeping them trapped.

Gunfire from the sky rains down on them. The bridge goes up in flames; the truck is plunged straight into the water; and for a second, Elliot thinks, _oh, thank fucking God, I’m done._

But she’s not, unfortunately. As she holds her breath around the water she’d swallowed upon the impact, she struggles out through the open window of the truck and fights her way to the surface. Everything inside of her wants to quit—everything says, _we could just close our eyes, we could just be done,_ and then she remembers.

_The second you think you can’t go anymore, you dig and keep going anyway. No matter what._

Her hands find soil. She hauls herself out of the water, coughing, lungs straining for air. Her vision blurs black and fuzzes, fizzing and popping in and out of existence as she considers the logistics of letting herself die. Just for a second. She can die for a second, right?

_“No! Get off me! I am a United States Federal Marshal!”_

It’s Burke. She can see the glimmer of flashlights on a distant bank, closer to the bridge. The dull, wet impact of something against skin quiets him; as Elliot lays back against the bank with her eyes flickering shut, she feels fingers grip the front of her shirt and haul her upwards.

_“My children...”_

The voice drones out of speakers—the sound speckles in and out, crackling in her head, distant but sickening.

“S—” Her voice slurs as she tries to say something; she’s being carried, and she doesn’t know to where, or by who. “W—Wait—”

_“We must give thanks to God. The day I have prophesied to you has arrived.”_

Elliot tries to force her eyes open. She can’t. She can’t, and she’s going to let Burke down, because she can’t dig anymore. How is she supposed to dig if her nails are scraping the bottom of the barrel?

_“Everything I’ve told you has come true... The authorities who tried to take me from you are now in the loving embrace of my Family... save for one.”_

She’s going to be sick. She’s going to be sick, and she wants to die, and she thinks that fucking psycho is talking about her.

_“But the Wayward Soul will be found. They will be punished...”_

She can see stairs. Concrete stairs, as the man carrying her hauls her down, down _down down_. Vaguely, hazily, she thinks, _belly of the beast, now?_ and she wonders if she will ever feel normal again. Her vision fuzzes black, but she’s not dead and she’s not asleep; it’s unfortunate.

_“And in the end, they will see our glorious purpose.”_

Metal clinks against metal. Cold from the concrete floor seeps through her soaked clothes. Elliot lifts her head lazily, feeling the tug and strain of handcuffs around her wrists, and when she opens her eyes she can see she’s—somewhere. Somewhere, and handcuffed to a bed, while an older man stands at the radio. Joseph’s voice rattled on through it.

_“I am your Father. You are my Children. And together, we will march too—”_

The man turns the radio off. The air hangs hazy around him with smoke; something burns in the ashtray, and she thinks, _fuck, I’d kill for a goddamn cigarette right about now._

“You know what that shit means?” the man asks, turning to look at her. She blinks at him blearily, and when she doesn’t answer, he plants himself in a chair in front of her.

Joey, and maybe Pratt—Burke, Whitehorse? They’re all gone, or dead, or something somewhere, and now it feels less like this was her chance to really start over and more like a set of trials and tribulations to make her suffer.

Her gaze flickers to meet the man’s, and she shakes her head uncertainly. The words won’t come out, even if she thinks there’s even a chance she’d have the strength.

“It means the roads have all been closed.”

_No one is coming to save you._

“It means the phone lines have been cut.”

_What do we do with grief?_

“It means there’s no signals getting in or out of this valley.”

_Give ‘em your teeth if you have to._

Elliot feels her stomach churn violently, nauseated. She wishes this man would have left her to die—or sleep, or whatever it was her body had been trying to get her to do on that riverbank.

“But mostly,” he finishes, leaning in to look at her with a hard, flinty gaze, “it means we’re all fucked.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

A loud knock at the door echoed in the dim, stinging heat of the bath. For a moment, she felt a jolt of instinctive fear pound through her body—where was she? Was she drowning again? Had she not made it out of the river, had she—

Burke, and Joseph, and Joey getting dragged away, and Dutch, and—

But then Elliot remembered: she was at her mother’s house, and she’d run herself a bath in the big clawfoot off from the master with a vodka soda, and John Seed was here, too, and her lungs burned because she’d been sitting under the water. The sharp, splintering pain in her chest was grief, the memory of Joey's laugh and smile freshly remembered.

Breaking the surface and steadying the breath that wanted to gasp out of her through her nose, Elliot pushed any stray bubbles from her face and eyes and waited again to see if the sound was real.

Another knock came. “El?” John called from outside the bathroom, and his voice hinged on something else—something strange and foreign, and it gave her a tiny little thrill through the pit of her stomach to know _she_ was making him feel like that. She blinked a few times, straightening up in the bathtub as the now-lukewarm water splashed around her. It had been a long time since she’d fallen asleep like that, without sporting a metric fuckton of exhaustion for days. It was probably the alcohol.

“I’m here,” she replied, feeling hollowed out and trying not to let it show in her voice, “come in. What is it?”

The door clicked open. John glanced around curiously at the bathroom—her mother had never let her use this bathroom for _anything,_ not even to get ready for a high school dance or her graduation, and she thought maybe that made the room all the more special—all of her mother’s glittering compacts and colored perfume bottles, carefully-maintained hanging plants, the big French windows and gauzy white curtains; they all spoke to a woman who had created for herself a safe space.

She only thought, _I hate that she never let me enjoy this safe space, too._

“We should be going back soon,” he said lightly, crossing the marbled floor to drag the stool from the vanity up to the side of the tub. With one arm leaned up against the porcelain, he reached the other hand out and tilted her chin; like this, covered only by the rose-scented bubble bath foaming up around the hollow of her chest, she was sure that she looked gnarly—mottled with bruises the size of Kian’s fingerprints, all over her neck and shoulders and chest, dousing her in a faded red-wine color that made her skin prickle in faint pain when John traced the slope of her collarbone.

Kian was dead, but he was still there—lingering just below her skin, a bone-deep ache and grief that she would never be rid of because no matter _how_ dead he was, Joey was much _more_ dead.

“—you’re thinking about,” John murmured, his eyes flickering over her face, and she leaned back against the head of the tub.

“Come again?” Elliot reached out of the tub, snagging the half-drained glass of vodka soda and downing the rest of it with a grimace that only partially cleared out the fog of grief.

“I said,” he continued lightly, fingers smoothing over bruisy skin below her collarbone, “tell me what you’re thinking about.”

 _I’m thinking about Joey, and your fucking cultists dragging her out of the helicopter and taking her away from me._ There was no venom in the passing voice as she closed her eyes, damp hair sticking to the nape of her neck and her mother’s bath oils filling up her senses; John was touching the spot he’d once threatened to mark her with her sin. _Wrath._

_I think it’ll fit nicely right here, don’t you? Maybe just over your heart._

It wasn’t enough to wear it on her skin, anymore. It didn’t _feel_ like enough, anyway. It was inside of her; a poison that she couldn’t sweat out, embedded in the sinew of her tissue now.

“I can hear those little gears turning, hellcat.”

“What do we have to do?” Elliot asked after a moment, opening her eyes, as John’s fingers traced the shape of a letter beneath her collarbone. _W... R... A..._

“Do?”

_T..._

“For the baptism,” she clarified, as the blunt drag of his nail finished the final touch of an _H._ “What do we have to do?”

John watched her for a moment, gaze flickering over the quickly-fading red marks he’d left on her sternum. She knew that look on his face—he was _hungry_ for it, this thing he had been trying to get from her all along. Even after it all, he still itched to carve it out of her.

And maybe she did, too; maybe it would feel like a penance, a purging, a catharsis, a—

 _That’s how,_ she thought after a moment. _That’s how they get people._

“We’ll cleanse you...” His voice trailed off and his eyes flickered back up to hers. “And then reveal your sin.”

“Cut it out of me,” Elliot supplied, exhaling a little out of her mouth.

John’s mouth twisted around a smile when her eyes traced the exposed Sloth scar she had memorized the feel of. “ _Real_ courage.”

She wondered, briefly, if it would feel the same as when she had done it before. The scar would certainly look different—no fine gossamer wisps, ghosting across her abdomen and hips and the inside of her thighs. Those were ghosts. This one—this scar John wanted to give her—would be a neon sign flashing over her head.

_Do you think they’ll understand, when they read the reports of what you did to that man? Of the trail of bodies you’ve left behind yourself?_

Could she have a life after this? Would it matter if she and John even left? Regardless of where they went—if they did—they would be a pair, matching in scars and matching in sin and _matching matching matching_ until they were the same, just as much blood on her hands as there was on his.

“Then,” he continued, dipping his hand into the fragrant water before drawing it up across her bruise-mottled shoulder, “you’ll be clean.”

 _I liked it,_ she thought through the haze of alcohol and perfumed air, _killing Kian. I liked it._

His fingers came up to her jaw, and he leaned against the edge of the porcelain tub and kissed her; long and luxurious, not punishing or bruising but drawn-out enough to elicit in her a pleasant, dull ache. 

“Okay,” Elliot murmured, speaking the words into his mouth, into his kiss.

John paused, but did not pull away. She could taste the dredges of what swallows he’d gotten of her drink in his breath. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” She reached up and dragged him the tiny distance back in for another kiss. “I want to.” She thought, _if it’s what will convince Joseph, if it’s what’ll make it so I can leave, if it means you’ll go with me, if it means I won't have to be alone,_ but none of those words came. It had never been her strong suit, talking about her feelings.

John exhaled, like the acquiescence—the relenting—was enough to drive him to nirvana. She could feel his smile against her mouth.

“El,” he rumbled against her mouth, fingers skimming along the slope of her jaw, “I’m gonna give you everything you want.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

“Slow down.”

They’d only been driving through Fall’s End for about five minutes—not that it took too long; you could probably drive five minutes in just about any direction and hit the edge of town—when the blonde barked out the order. It was a strange juxtaposition, to have her biting out words like that when the smell of roses wafted off of her like a perfume, filling the cab from the oils in the bath.

Elliot’s voice was sharp when she spoke; her eyes were fixed on something out past her window, evening having sunk heavy and dark over the town of Fall’s End. It was a ghost town, now, but the urgency in her voice had him hitting the brake more fervently than he intended, and the truck lurched to stop.

“What is it?” John asked, and when he did Boomer growling low and angry behind him. He eyed the Heeler before he realized even the _dog_ was looking elsewhere.

The blonde didn’t answer. She leaned forward instead, as though straining to see in the dark. Over her head, he could see the front of the Spread Eagle where they had been only a few days ago; now it was decorated with blossoms, and at its base sat two darkly-clothed figures. This far away, John couldn’t see if they were asleep or awake.

And then he _did_ see. He saw the arterial spray against the dark wood, flickering under neon lights that buzzed in the stillness of the night; he saw the bouquet clutched between their hands; he saw the open, glassy eyes and slack jaws, and the glint of metal sitting on the ground beside each body.

Above them, written in dark, oxidized red-brown: _**WRATH, DO YOU WANT TO BLOOM IN ME?**_

“Sorry fucks,” Elliot said, her voice flinty and steeled as she leaned back into her seat. In the cab of the truck, the perfume of the bath oils radiated off of her in gentle waves, the heady, floral scent almost dizzying this concentrated and close. 

John let the truck roll forward a little, scanning warily; he didn’t see any dark shapes moving behind windows, or in the distant treeline, which was what actually worried him—the presence of more, live enemies, not the suicide love-birds.

But if it bothered Elliot, if it made her feel any type of way to see these dead bodies cradling life in one last embrace, he couldn’t see it on her face. He pressed on the accelerator and glanced at her expression through the corner of his eyes; there was a steeliness there. Not _empty,_ not as though she had stopped processing, but as though she _had_ , and it didn’t mean anything to her.

 _Good,_ he thought. _That’s how it needs to be._

The rest of the drive back was quiet. There were an unsettling amount of coupled-bodies on the drive home—propped against trees and patches of highway railings or the occasional cliff face, hands interlocked as they cradled blossoms, some more intricately decorated than others. But the basis of it was always the same: a couple, sometimes one or more additional, slumped and glassy-eyed. Some had the words written around them, some did not. It didn’t seem to hold any pattern that he could tell.

Elliot closed her eyes and drifted in and out of sleep until they got back to the compound, the flickering fluorescents stirring her awake. As they were pulling in, Jacob was getting a truck ready to _go_ ; it was late into the evening now, almost midnight, and a sting of apprehension skittered up John’s spine at the sight of his eldest brother loading a rifle into a truck.

As soon as she had opened the door, letting Boomer out first and then following suit, Elliot looked at Jacob and said, “Where are _you_ going?”

“Not your fuckin’ business,” Jacob replied serenely.

“Everything,” Elliot said flatly, “is my business.”

“It’s cute that you care.” Jacob flashed her a half-cocked smile. “But don’t worry, deputy, I’m a big boy.”

John slid out from the driver’s seat, watching the exchange with some apprehension. But it seemed to fizzle and die out right then and there, like Jacob and Elliot had come to some silent truce about the matter without his intervention; Elliot rolled her eyes and scoffed under her breath, heading for the bunkhouse without waiting for John.

Which was fine, because John lingered. He swung the truck keys around his finger and said, “So where _are_ you going?”

Jacob glanced back at him over his shoulder. The redhead regarded John for a moment before he looked to make sure Elliot had closed the door behind her and said, “Couple of ours say they spotted Burke wandering around down by the Henbane.”

 _Oh,_ John thought, the words both giving him a jolt of excitement _and_ a little of dread. Burke being missing was a problem, that was to be sure—but if they could find him? Get rid of him without ever bringing him back into contact with Elliot? The less time for conspirators to put silly ideas in her head about getting out and moving on from Hope County, the easier it was going to be to convince her of what a bad idea that was in the end.

“You’re going to go get him?” John prompted.

“Yep,” Jacob drawled, “dead or alive.”

“Preferably dead.”

The corners of Jacob’s mouth ticked upward, and he flashed his teeth. “That a request, little brother?”

Stifling his own smile, John replied lightly, “I just think it’ll solve a _lot_ of problems if the Marshal becomes permanently lost. And if it makes _my_ job a little easier in the process, then—”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jacob interrupted, waving his hand. _I’ll see what I can do_ was about as good as an _anything you want_ if it was coming from Jacob, John knew; so when he said that, and clapped John on the shoulder as he passed, it felt like an assurance more than a cautionary ‘maybe’.

John nodded, and then said, “We saw the Family.”

His eldest brother paused in his movements, and then hauled himself into the truck, looking at John expectantly.

“They’re killing themselves,” he elaborated. “At least the ones we saw. You’ll probably…”

John’s voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat and said, “It’ll be hard to miss them.”

Jacob gave one short, brief nod, slamming the door of the truck and starting it with a rattling rumble. “Sorry fucks,” he said, his words unintentionally mirroring Elliot’s words, and it was all John could do not to tell him he sounded _exactly_ like her.

John headed for the chapel, moving with a new and reinvigorated purpose. For once— _finally_ —things were beginning to fall into place. With Burke out of the picture, the last of the resistance having evacuated Hope County, and Elliot’s agreement to the baptism, he thought this could only indicate smooth sailing from here on out.

Well, _mostly_ smooth. There was still the matter of their marriage, which Elliot didn’t know about—and it was a big deal, probably, for her to know that her last name was changed. As far as the law would be concerned, however, everything would check out and be perfectly binding, and when he told her she would understand that he had done it _for them_ , that he had done it because they needed that extra measure of protection in the instance that—

 _Don’t,_ he thought to himself, pushing the door open. _We are not considering the idea that the End isn’t coming._

“John,” Joseph greeted him, sounding surprised. It looked like he had just been walking towards the doors himself to leave. His brother's gaze flickered over him inquisitively. “It’s late.”

“Elliot wants to do the baptism,” he said, trying to quell his delight at the gentle lifting of Joseph’s brows at the news. “I’ll do it as soon as you want, Joseph.”

The man paused. He seemed to roll the announcement around in his head for a while, the white leather-bound bible tucked under his arm as his eyes flickered absently over the wooden flooring.

“She’s agreed to it,” John tried again. “To the—”

“Yes,” Joseph replied, “I understand.”

Another moment of silence stretched. John kept waiting for it—the happiness, the pride that Joseph _should_ feel at him having accomplished this last great feat. _Anything,_ John thought, _I’d take anything, if you just gave me something to work with._

“Tomorrow,” he said finally, and reached out, planting a hand on John’s shoulder. He squeezed, and a bit of relief flooded John’s system. “You baptize our deputy tomorrow—”

_My deputy._

“—and then we will prepare to retreat for the End,” he finished. “Yes?”

John nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“Good.” Joseph regarded him for a moment, and then, at last, a little smile quirked the edges of his lips. “You’ve done well, John.”

He felt his shoulders sag a little in relief. “Thank you,” he said, “Joseph, I—”

“And I will forgive you the transgression of your lust,” Joseph continued mildly, “as you will make sure that Elliot joins us completely and wholly. Isn’t that right?”

The dread returned. Just a little; it was how Joseph operated the most effectively. Tiny, light dosings of dread, just to remind you who was in control, who it was that ran things around here. He cleared his throat.

“I’ve already,” John began, “confessed to those which—”

Joseph’s hand came to the back of his neck. “You have been fixated on our deputy since the moment she started taking things from us. You can re-commit an offense,” he said, his words echoing Jacob’s, and for a moment John felt a spike of anger—that they had been talking about him when he wasn’t around. “You’re not so wrathful as to go to such lengths to bring her to heel for that alone. And even if you _were,”_ Joseph added, “it wouldn’t matter, as you had already given in to your sin.”

“She’s my _wife,”_ John insisted, and his words were coming out angrier than he wanted; as always, Joseph could slide right under his skin like it was nothing, like it was second nature to him. 

“A fact she remains, as of yet, unaware of. Regardless, you lusted after her far before that, and acted on it before then, as well. I’ve let it go because of our unusual circumstances, but you understand,” his brother replied, his words a blunt-force-trauma slap to John’s exhausted brain. A moment of silence stretched between them as John worked the words around in his mouth— _I actually don’t understand, nothing about that changed how I treated her in my care, I did **everything** you asked of me and I shouldn’t have to pay_—but Joseph said, “At any rate, all will be forgiven once we are awaiting the End." And then, pointedly, " _All_ of us.”

John swallowed. He opened his mouth to say something, any of the thoughts running around in his brain, but Joseph dropped his hand and brushed past him, humming lightly under his breath.

“Goodnight, John.”

He stood there for a little while longer after Joseph had left, turning the words around in his brain. Once again, he felt very far away from Joseph; but all this time, he had been working hard to do _exactly_ what his brother had asked of him. Elliot might have already been converted to their cause if he’d been allowed to break her in the way he’d wanted to before. But it was _Joseph_ who had insisted on a more merciful route, _Joseph_ who had reiterated step by step that to do so by mercy was the way it needed to be done for the deputy.

And now, it was _Joseph_ criticizing the steps he’d taken, in adverse conditions, to give him what he wanted.

John pushed the troubling thoughts out of his brain. Another place, another time, he might wallow on them a little more—perhaps a time when he could drink his way through them, come back to reconciliation about the fear that Joseph somehow managed to strike in him with ease, deal with it then.

When he finally walked himself to the bunkhouse, he found Elliot sitting with Faith outside the door, smoking a cigarette while they exchanged quiet words. Faith flashed a radiant smile at John as he approached, her eyes glimmering playfully.

“Ladies,” John greeted, trying to shake his last conversation with Joseph. “Nice evening for an outside chat?”

“Fucking cold,” Elliot replied, taking a drag of her cigarette and blowing the smoke out and away from Faith.

“I was just telling El how happy I am that she’s here,” Faith told him, coming to a stand. Her very casual and nonchalant use of the nickname _El_ was enough to spike a little suspicion in John, but when she spoke, Elliot’s eyes flickered like she was trying not to smile, like the words meant something to her and she was trying to remain stoic.

Elliot said, not remarking on the nickname and tapping the ash from the end of her cigarette, “That’s two out of four siblings that like me. Think I can go for a full house?”

 _Three,_ John thought absently, but he didn’t say; the words would have shredded his mouth on the way out.

“Well,” his sister continued lightly, “I’m _exhausted._ Goodnight, you two.”

“Night,” John replied, keeping his voice idle as she left. He extended a hand down to Elliot, and she took it, hauling herself to her feet; he snagged the cigarette out of her hand and said, “Speaking of sleep, how about we don’t cram it on that twin bunk tonight?”

Elliot watched him smoke her cigarette down, her gaze flickering back up to his. “It’s cute how you think I’m just automatically going to let you sleep with me all the time.”

“It’s cute how _you_ act like you don’t like it,” he replied, pitching his voice low, “especially when we aren’t _sleeping_ in bed.”

She took her cigarette back, finishing it and dropping it to the ground to stamp it out with her shoe. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind not having you breathing down my neck all night.”

“Oh? You suppose?”

“I’m losing the motivation to continue this conversation,” Elliot cautioned in a murmur, even as he leaned in and kissed her, his hand instinctively coming up to the back of her neck to keep her there. She didn’t pull away, or even try to; instead, after he’d kissed her breathless, she continued, “Are you going to take me or what, Slick?”

He laughed, the sound billowing out of his mouth at her little country-drawl come peeking through.

_You will baptize our deputy tomorrow._

His fingers curling into the semi-dry hair at the nape of her neck, and he kissed her again—harder, now, open-mouthed and hungry, until he could feel her fingers knotting into the front of his shirt.

“Tomorrow,” he said into the kiss, “tomorrow we’ll do it. A new cleansing, revealing your sin.”

“Fast,” she murmured.

“So Joseph has decreed.”

Elliot pulled back to look at him; he wanted to lean in, chase her mouth with another kiss, but she said, “Do you always do what your brother says? I thought pre-marital fucking was a big no.”

The words twisted hot and traitorous in his stomach. He wanted to say, _technically, we’ve only done that once,_ but he knew better. After her little display back at her mother’s house, he knew better.

He swallowed back the venom and said, carefully articulating his words, “If we could refrain from ruining a _perfectly_ good moment—”

“By talking,” Elliot deadpanned.

“By _criticizing_ ,” he clarified, “that would be _wonderful_.”

She regarded him amusedly, one brow arching upward loftily. She was clearly thinking about something, working it around in her brain in a place that he couldn’t reach—still, parts of her remained locked away from him, parts of her that he desperately wanted to get his hands on and hadn’t yet.

“Well,” she relented at last, “I’d hate to ruin a moment. Show me where this luxurious bed is, huh?”

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Elliot could tell that her acquiescence unsettled John. She could tell that he had been expecting more of a fight out of her; she was so _tired_ of fighting, though. She was so tired, and she was so worn out, and sometimes she could feel her brain switching off in the middle of something happening, like a greater cosmic power was consistently turning her _Do Not Disturb_ sign on.

She’d feel better in the morning, maybe. It helped that she hadn’t looked at the photos littering her mother’s house for too long, and that she’d drank through most of her time there to keep the memories at bay. Elliot didn’t want to linger on thoughts of running barefoot through the house, shrieking with laughter as her mother called out for her to slow down; she didn’t want to think about how many times she and Joey had curled up on the same couch that John Seed had kissed her on, eating lemon bars and flipping through teen magazines while her mother drank and hummed in the kitchen.

There were good memories there. There were memories of a time when Elliot felt like the entire world was within her reach—she could go anywhere, be anything, become anyone she wanted back then.

Things had changed.

 _She_ had changed. And even though John’s promise wavered, even though it still lingered in her chest uncertainly like a beast of its own, she thought maybe he meant it. She had seen the tension between John and Joseph as of late. Something about their interactions was waning thin, worried and worn between them, and that meant that when John said he wanted those things with her—a home, a life—that maybe she could trust him.

 _Isn’t that a pretty thought?_ A wicked part of her intoned, vicious. _The man who’s lied and lied and lied to you, being truthful for the first time._

But she was tired, and she was different, and being different took work and energy and she didn’t want to think about that. What else _could_ she think, anyway? She could operate off of nothing else.

Admittedly, not trying to fit both of their bodies on a twin bed was doing wonders for her mood. John had led her to another small building within the compound; it was laid out much like the other bunkhouse had been, with a bathroom and a small table, but the bed was queen-sized and pushed up against the far wall, tucked into a corner. With Boomer having taken off with his nose to the ground—likely chasing a scent—Elliot had stripped out of her jeans and crawled into the bed with a laborious sigh that only partially revealed the relief she felt.

“I have never,” John said amusedly as she pulled the blankets up, “seen you more relaxed.”

“You did interfere with my life at an inopportune time. My bed is king-sized at home, you know; nothing like sleeping diagonally on a giant bed.”

He laughed; as he shed his own clothes—his belt, jeans, shirt—he watched her like he was trying to figure out why it was she had become so agreeable and so quickly, why she hadn’t picked another fight with him.

Blissfully, he didn’t ask. John crawled into the bed next to her, and already he was reaching to wind his arm around her waist; when he pulled her close to him, she felt that pleasant little coil of dopamine hit her brain, and she thought, _what a time, that John’s hands on me make it feel like I’m not drifting away._

She thought to say it, for just a moment; she thought maybe she could give John that, because she’d been taking and taking and taking and she didn’t think she was giving him anything. 

The words didn’t come so easily to her, so instead of saying them, Elliot reached up and dragged him down to kiss him. _I’m gonna give you everything you want,_ he’d said, and just remembering those words made her feel too-warm. She’d never, ever had anyone devoted to her—not like this, not in the way that John was, dragging his mouth reverently down her neck and sliding his hand along the back of her thigh.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” John said, murmuring the words into the skin of her neck. His mouth skimmed lower, dragging down her sternum; his hands pushed up the hem of her tank top and she felt the slick, hot flicker of his tongue against the part of her that she knew was scarred, ghosting and intent.

“Can’t,” she managed out, trying to steady her breathing, “when you’re—”

“You can.” He nudged her legs apart, glancing up at her inquisitively, the blankets dragging down with him. “Tell me.” He kissed the inside of her thigh, open-mouthed, and she felt her breath shallow a little.

“I’m thinking about—what you said, back at the house,” she managed out, as John’s breath fanned across her skin.

John’s eyes fixed on hers again. His fingers skimmed beneath the hem of her underwear; he was waiting for her to tell him to stop. When she didn’t, he tugged the fabric down, sliding it completely out of the way and discarding it somewhere on the floor.

The apprehension curled up, high and hot, in her throat. Still, forced herself to relax, to think about John’s hands gripping her hips and his eyes and his mouth and—

“When you said,” Elliot continued, “you’re going to give me everything I want, and that you wanted—”

He pressed his mouth to her; she _felt_ the sound he made into the gesture, her vibrating straight through her and short-circuiting her brain. Instinctively, her fingers went to his hair and knotted. She didn’t know if she was trying to ground herself again or if she was trying to keep John there, but the intention didn’t matter—as soon as she pulled, even a little, she felt John’s tongue slide sly and wicked against her and she moaned without thinking about it, the sound as involuntary as breathing.

It felt too raw, too vulnerable, and she tried to think _is this too much? Am I feeling too much right now?_ , but the pervasive thought in her brain was: _yes yes yes, this is what we need, this is what we want._ To be loved, to be touched, to be worshipped.

“Can't get enough of you.” John's voice was rich and dark against her skin. “So sweet for me, hellcat.”

“John, we—you don’t—” Elliot started breathlessly, but the words were strangled in her throat by a half-sighed whimper when John’s mouth returned to where he wanted her the most and he groaned, like he was starved for her, like he could barely stand the thought of not having his mouth on her right that instant.

“Fuck, I wanted this so bad,” he murmured huskily, reverent as he planted kisses along the slope of her hip. “Wanted those sounds you make, and the way you’re looking at me—knew you’d make the prettiest fucking noises when I got my mouth on you—”

Another desperate sound came out of her, just loud enough that John's response was to drag his teeth along the dip and curve of her hip bone. He sighed dreamily and leaned in to flatten his tongue against the neediest part of her; the gesture served only to make Elliot moan and squirm, and her hips instinctively arched upward to try and garner some friction—any friction—but John's hands held her down against the bed.

“Love when you’re desperate for me,” he rumbled against her, breathing the words against her skin and making her breath stutter out of her in an uneven exhale. He pressed his mouth back down, tongue flicking and dragging wet, hot pleasure against her, his gaze half-lidded and not once straying from Elliot’s. 

It was almost too much, the whole lot of it; John, saying filthy things against her while he ate her out, his eyes hungry and his mouth hungrier and the way that he dug his fingers into her hips and—

“F-Fucking—tease,” she managed out, but he shook his head, rumbling against her and drawing another spiral of heat straight into her stomach, sharp and unforgiving.

“Don’t you like it when I take my _time_ with you? You certainly seem like you’re enjoying yourself.” He hooked his arms underneath her legs and tugged her down against him. She squirmed, her lashes fluttering when he let his breath fan across her. “Thinking about how I promised you whatever you wanted. Are you going to tell me, then? What you want?”

Elliot could tell that he loved saying that, _I’ll give you whatever you want,_ because he knew what it did to her; that it thrilled her, this shred of power that he gave her, offered to her. John dragged his tongue against her, his gaze heated and nearly blown-black with want, and stayed exactly there between her legs.

“John,” Elliot moaned, “I—want you to fuck me—” And then, in an effort to feel a little like she was in control: _“Please.”_

The word had its desired effect; she could feel the tension radiating off of him, straining against his carefully-manicured veneer of being in charge. And then John groaned at her words, his own eyes fluttering shut for a moment, as though her words were enough to make him need a moment before he opened them again. He pulled back from her, sitting up so that he could press his fingers into her, and _fuck_ if it didn’t make all the more _delicious_ to have John watching her while he did.

He said, his voice hoarse with want, “El, you’re so fucking— _God,_ you’re so fucking gorgeous like this—asking so nicely for me—”

“Fuck me,” Elliot insisted, her voice verging dangerously close to a wail as he changed the pace of his fingers very little. She thought if John kept looking at her like that, if he kept saying those things, she might finish just like this—and she didn’t want to. “Stop teasing me and f—fuck me like I know you want to—like we _both_ want—”

It was enough. Or maybe it was the thing John had been waiting to hear from her, because it prompted him to shed what little clothing remained between them and sidle back between her legs. Reaching down to cradle her face with his hand as he kissed her, she could taste herself on his mouth; she could feel the heady, intoxicating drag of him against her and _God_ he was taking his _fucking time._

“Want this to last,” he moaned, burying his face into her neck, “fuck, so good for me, baby, so wet already and I just can’t fucking… Can’t fucking get my fill of you.”

Elliot keened her agreement breathlessly. _Yes,_ she wanted to say, _yes, I’m so good for you, now please hurry up and fuck me,_ the thought driving a wedge of heat straight down her spine. As soon as John slid inside of her, he was panting into her skin, biting out swears as he tried to keep himself from snapping into her.

“J- _John,”_ she whimpered. Her brain felt muggy, hazy with want; like she wasn’t going to be able to think about anything else except for him, and that was exactly what she wanted. Not to think. “So—feels so good—”

“Yeah,” he gritted out, moving slowly, _too_ slowly, “ _fuck_ yeah, this is what you needed, huh? Needed me to fuck you like this—nice and slow, make you feel me _every—single—time—I_ — _”_

It felt good to give him this. She hadn’t lied, when she’d said that before—that she _liked_ giving him what he wanted, that it made her feel in-control and desired and _loved_ and maybe that was the worst part of it all, that her brain might have been making those things up as a way to justify this. But it didn’t matter in that moment; all she could think about was the feeling of him rocking into her, hips slotted perfectly against hers and his mouth on her neck and the faded scent of his cologne mixing with the floral scent of her own remaining perfume.

Elliot sighed, _“Yes, John,”_ in agreement, and pulled him up for a kiss; his movements hitched just a little, the delicious drag of the uneven pacing almost sending her right over the edge. _So close so close,_ her body said, so she knotted her fingers into his hair tight and said it again; _“Yes, yes, yes,”_ against his mouth, moaning it, until John was grinding out swear between his teeth.

“Not yet,” the brunette moaned, almost frantic with desire. “I want you to come, I want to feel you get fucking _wet_ for me, baby—”

She knew that she could make him beg, that she could make him come undone if she really wanted to. But for this moment, Elliot thought she liked this; she liked letting him take control, liked squirming and shifting underneath him until each cant of his hips against hers had sparks of pleasure flickering behind her eyes.

John’s mouth went to her neck. His teeth dragged, and then he bit down harder than he had before; the pain bloomed wet and hot, and she _moaned_ , her lashes fluttering as it sent her _sprinting sprinting sprinting_ right over that edge.

 _“Yes,”_ he ground out, “yes, _fuck_ yes, so fucking good for me, El, s-so— _good_.”

Elliot kissed him hard when he came, his fingers reigniting old bruises on her hips and her own high still cruising, careening prettily down; the _surrender_ was almost better, the act of giving in and giving John what he wanted nearly as intoxicating as the idea that he was hers.

 _Mine,_ she thought dreamily as he dragged his tongue over the bite mark on her neck, the word one that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to her but which hadn’t occurred to her in this context before. For that suspended moment in time, nothing else could matter to her; there was no space in her brain to worry about anything except the weight of his body against hers and the wicked, delicious aftershocks radiating throughout her body.

All she could think about was how nice it felt to not be so alone.

_It feels good for him to be mine._

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When he awoke the next morning, there were three soft knocks at the door. John blinked, forcing himself to work through the tired haze of his mind, sitting up and reluctantly leaving the warmth of the bed and—

And of Elliot, curled up against him, stirring from her sleep.

“John?” It was Faith, mild-tempered and shy; like she knew exactly what she was going to find if she opened the door and she was trying not to let him know. It wasn’t that it bothered her; it was that Faith was exceptionally good at keeping herself in-check, so any time her tone deviated from serene was a red flag.

“I’m awake,” he called back, and even _he_ could hear how hoarse his voice was coming out of him, rough with sleep.

There was a pause, and then Faith said sweetly, “Joseph says we need to begin soon.”

The blonde beside him rolled onto her other side, hauling the blankets up to her chin. “Fuck off.”

“We’ll be ready in thirty,” John called back.

“He said that he wants me to get Elliot ready,” she continued, and _there_ it was; that sly little curl in her voice, the one that reminded him exactly of why it was Joseph kept her around. 

John passed a hand over his face tiredly, rubbing his eyes for a moment before he cleared his throat and climbed out of bed. “Sure, alright, Faith, just—give me a minute—”

“Take your time.”

The implication hung there—that she would politely wait until he was done getting dressed, but that she wouldn’t be _leaving_ to wait, so that anything he wanted to say to Elliot was going to have to be saved for later. Haphazardly pulling some clean clothes out of the dresser and onto his body, he glanced back over his shoulder to see Elliot sitting up in bed; she cradled the blanket against her chest and blinked tiredly at him.

“It’s time,” John said. “For the—”

“Yeah, I heard.” Elliot carded her fingers through her hair and slid out from under the blankets. Like this—in various arrays of undress—John could see the purpled bruising along her sternum and neck and shoulder, a few of them on her legs, beginning to fade into a wine color and even lighter still around the edges.

 _I’ll have to be careful when I’m writing her sin,_ he thought absently as he buttoned his shirt. As Elliot muddled her way through pulling on last night’s clothes, he closed the distance between them and reached for her; she let him, though maybe only because she was still half-asleep, with the daylight still fresh and new and the outside mostly still dark.

John cradled her face and leaned down to kiss her. “You and me,” he said against her mouth, “right, hellcat?”

 _It’s not a lie,_ he reasoned when she kissed him back. _It’s not a lie to say that._

“You and me,” Elliot agreed. Her voice sounded thick, like he’d said the exact thing she wanted to hear and it had caught her off guard, and he felt a little thrill of victory in his chest.

Once she was mostly-dressed, he made his way to the door and nudged it open. True to her word, Faith had waited patiently; a swath of dark fabric was draped over her arm, silken, and as she stepped past John she said, “Okay, John, girls only now.”

Obediently, he stepped out of the building, turning and looking at Elliot over his shoulder. The eye contact only lasted for a minute before Faith beamed at him and shut the door. Inside, he could hear Faith saying something to Elliot; making out the words, however, was near impossible.

“Right,” he said under his breath. “This is fine. Everything’s fine.”

It was the first time he’d said it to himself, in a long time, and it felt _true._

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

“It’s so fucking cold,” Elliot said, shivering. The silk slip of a dress that Faith had told her she needed to wear for the “baptism” barely did anything against the early-morning chill. Dawn had nearly crept all the way over the distant mountains, and as they picked their way down to the water, she wished they’d just let her wear the clothes that she had brought. Naturally, Eden’s Gate—and Joseph, by proxy—were completely incapable of doing anything reasonably.

“I know,” Faith replied sympathetically, their fingers intertwined as they picked their way down the path. “But at least it’s only for a little while. In and out of the water, and then you can change again.” And then, as though it were meant to comfort her, she added, “Blue’s your color.”

Elliot grimaced. Blue was _John’s_ color. “Yeah,” she agreed dryly, “it matches well with my bruises, don’t you think?”

The woman laughed, giving her hand a little squeeze, and for a brief second in time Elliot felt a twinge of regret. There wasn’t too much time to think about it; by the time she was opening her mouth to apologize—an action which Faith seemed to elicit in her quite easily, when overall apologizing was not something that came so naturally to her—they had broken the treeline and all thoughts went sweeping out of her brain.

Joseph stood at the edge of the shore, but she barely thought of him; she barely thought of _anything_ except for John, standing nearly waist-deep in the water, the Book of Joseph held open in one hand and his eyes fixed on her. It sent a little flurry of aches through her, reminding her that once, what felt like a thousand years ago, she had wanted to kill him. Spit in his face. Leave her mark on him and throw his entire fucking family behind bars.

But maybe Joseph had been right, when he asked if she really thought she was going to be accepted by the people she had done all of this to protect.

John's gaze swept over her as they came near; a grin split his face, and with his empty hand he reached for her. She was vaguely aware of Joseph saying something, light and tranquil, but the words didn't register in her brain. She was only barely aware of Faith letting go of her. With that same hand, she took John’s outstretched one, and he tugged lightly, guiding her into the chilly Autumnal waters; where it barely reached John’s waist, the water just crested above her belly button, and she felt the goosebumps spreading.

John cleared his throat. His eyes swept over the page in the book, before he closed it and held it out for Joseph. When the man took it, standing just at the edge of the water, he turned back to Elliot and murmured, low and barely above the sound of the water lapping around them, “You and me?”

Her stomach twisted and lurched uncomfortably, but she nodded. She’d had barely an opportunity to reconcile this moment with herself. She thought, maybe, if she made it a rebirth for herself—if she let Joseph think that it was for him, but in her mind and in the marrow of her bones it was for _her_ , that would be what mattered. But it was hard to think that way when John started reciting the words from the book, words that sparked in her memories of the last time this had been happening.

Hands, gripping her shirt, plunging her under the water over and over and over again. The “scripture” bleeding into her head, into her heart, muffled occasionally by the water. John’s voice, slick with venom, when he said, “ _This one’s not clean.”_

When John finished speaking, he reached up; still stuck in the waking nightmare-memory, Elliot’s hand reached up to grip his arm where the sleeve had been rolled up. 

John, plunging her under the water. Holding her. _Dark dark dark,_ and her voice rolling the word _weak_ around as she fought for air and struggled to break the surface—

But now, his hands cradled against the pillar of her neck; now, he looked at her reverently, like she was something to be worshipped.

“Here,” the brunette said, his voice low and soft, and somewhere in the back of her mind his words overlapped with a memory that at once felt both too sharp and too foggy to recall; “with me.”

“Okay,” she whispered. He smoothed his hand along her back, between her shoulder blades, and then pulled her under.

It took every ounce of her self-control not to fight it. Every fucking ounce of it, and she _still_ caught herself tensing like she was ready to. John kept her there, one hand between her shoulders and one hand on her sternum, the light pressure digging a little into the remaining bruises.

And he kept her there. And kept her there. _And_ —

Above the water, somewhere out there, she heard the sound of John saying something; more voices echoed back, more than just Joseph and Faith. He pulled her up out of the water abruptly; the sudden movement had her gasping for air, her nails digging into his forearm, and she thought, _he was going to let me, he was going to let me fucking drown, I_ —

“I’ve got you,” John said, steadying her; certainly he could feel the rapid pulse of her heart. There was something strange about his tone—it was _hard_ , tense and tight, and she saw it in his face, too.

Shivering ferociously, Elliot kept her hand gripping his arm. She started, “John, why did you—”

“Rookie?”

The familiar voice had her head jerking back to the shoreline. There _were_ more people there, now. There was Joseph with Faith beside him, and just at the edge of the water and staring at her, was Cameron Burke.

Behind him, Jacob flashed his teeth in a wolfish grin.

“See?” Jacob said, slapping his hand onto Burke's back like an old friend playing too rough. “Told you she was _just_ fine.”

The Marshal’s hands and feet were unbound, but he swayed on his feet, and Elliot saw that his pupils were blown wide and dark—he _reeked_ of a sickly-sweet floral scent that felt familiar, tingled somewhere in the back of her mind—

She couldn’t think. She couldn’t think about any of that; her brain felt like its competency had been completely reduced, that the strain of focusing on more than one thing at a time had become too much. And here, now, Burke was staring at her, and when he said it again—when he said, “Rook, is that you?”—his voice broke, hoarse and wretched.

“B—” Elliot’s throat closed tight. The air had been sucked out of her lungs; she felt the ache in her chest bloom fresh and hot and new, and it was _grief_ —grief and shame, reopening old wounds that she had hoped would be long-since healed over.

 _With me?_ Burke’s pulse, steadfast and firm, under her fingertips. 

The man’s expression crumpled. She let go of John’s arm and went to wade through the water; his hand caught her elbow and held her fast.

When she looked back at him, his expression was unreadable. He said, “El,” but that was _all_ he said, and she heard the strain of something close to desperation in his voice. _Don’t,_ it said, without saying it at all. _Don’t do this._

With her teeth chattering and a violent spike of anger racing through her, Elliot jerked her arm out of his grip and stumbled her way up onto the bank; Burke reached for her almost immediately, catching her arms and pulling her up out of the frigid water and to him. His body felt feverishly hot, even though the cotton of his shirt, his vest long-since discarded.

_You dig and keep going anyway. No matter what._

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he managed out as he gripped her, and she felt his eyes sweeping over the exposed bruising, like war paint on her skin.

“Burke,” Elliot said, her voice breaking, and _oh,_ she thought, _oh, there it is; the release, the catharsis,_ because she was crying at the overwhelming sense of shame and relief in equal amounts at the sight of the man who had walked her through her first real firefight; big, gasping, _grieving_ sobs, hiccuping in her chest violently because she kept thinking about Burke—she kept thinking about him grabbing her hand and saying, _we’re getting out of here,_ and how he was here _now_. Now that she was—

_This._

“God, what the fuck did they do to you?” Burke asked, his voice barely breaking the sound-barrier of a whisper. He pulled her forward, closer, protectively. “I’m so—I’m so fuckin’ sorry, I—”

“Found him wandering out by the old prison,” Jacob explained, presumably to the others and not to her, “having a nice little trip. Weren’t you, Burke?”

The shame washed up in her again, a nauseating cocktail that reminded her of all the things she had done. All of the awful things she had done, while Burke was out there, alone, wandering and confused and tripping on Bliss overloads and now he was _here._ Now he was here, and she kept thinking, _what have I done?_

“Hey,” Burke said against the top of her hair as she clutched at him, “I got you, Rook, I’m sorry, I’m here.”

 _I'm sorry,_ she wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come out. _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm ruined now._

“Well,” Joseph said, his voice tightly-controlled and forcibly serene, “I suppose we should give the deputy and her Marshal a moment to catch up, shouldn’t we?”


	20. hell is empty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why do we hunger so for vicious things?  
> Our wishes bend the statues of the gods."  
> —Robert Lowell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi henlo! I cannot believe we have one chapter and one epilogue left of this. I'm trying not to be emotional about so IT'S FINE but we're gonna keep the notes short otherwise I'm gonna get sappy!!
> 
> I want to thank you to @shallow-gravy for lending me her eyeballs on this and letting me stress out over nothing to her all the time; @lilwritingraven for being just an absolute peach a girl could ask for and listening to to me whine and cry; and @baeogorath, one of the first people to read this and suffer through the memes and dumpster fire writing to be here. Thank you all for loving my girl as much as you do!
> 
> @starcrier, idk man you know what's up. Elliot wouldn't be in any universe without you, and this fic just simply wouldn't have happened. I love you wit all me heart!
> 
> No warnings for this chapter, just Elliot's mouth and like uncalled for sadness, John's a baby. What's new.

Cameron Burke had failed.

That was the flat, bare truth of it now, as he kept the blonde clutched to him. Elliot’s entire body was trembling; she was soaking wet, and her teeth chattered, and she looked like someone had been throwing her around for sport. Even though she was crying softer now, gentle hiccups rattling around in her chest, she felt _small_ —tiny, and battered.

Yes, Cameron Burke had failed, and if the rapid decline of what was supposed to be a by-the-book arrest in a tiny Montana town wasn’t evidence enough of this, he certainly had enough evidence before him. Now, with John Seed looking at him as a man incensed. Now, with the eyes of the other Seed siblings pinned on him—the most unsettling of all being Faith’s large doe-eyes. All of them, bleeding in and out of his vision, the world swooning as the effects of Bliss rushed around in his bloodstream.

Now, with Elliot in his arms, having been laid out like a lamb for slaughter.

“I’m s-so—” The blonde’s voice hiccupped, fresh with grief. “I’m s-sorry, Burke, I— _tried_ to find you—”

“Stop,” he managed out, his voice hoarse, “stop, Rook, I don’t—you don’t need to apologize, it’s not...”

Joseph was saying something over their conversation, but he only caught snippets of it; the voices echoed and overlapped as the world swam, so it was easiest to be focused on quieting Elliot. As his hands went to her face, he thought he heard a sharp intake of breath from someone; he couldn’t have said who even if he thought he knew.

“Well, we can’t stand around,” said John, impatient and brisk. “Elliot’s going to get pneumonia again if we do.”

“Can’t have _that,”_ Jacob rumbled amusedly. “Why don’t we let her and Burke play catch-up back at the compound?”

And then Jacob looked at Elliot—and Burke could _tell_ , because her cries were quieting and she seemed to be trying to steel herself—and the redhead said, “I’m sure they have _a lot_ to talk about.”

“ _I’ll_ take Elliot back to get cleaned up,” John insisted. “And then they can chat all they want.”

The brunette turned and looked at them. Burke could feel Elliot’s heartbeat, held this close, and for a moment he was violently reminded of the way that it had felt when he was a child, catching wild rabbits that had hidden beneath the brush around his home; their pulses had been frantic, hard and fast and almost _violent,_ and now Elliot’s was—

John extended his hand. For all it mattered, Burke might as well have not existed at that moment; the man was _only_ looking at Elliot, perhaps mentally willing away Burke’s existence. He said, perfectly composed with only a thin tenor of venom in his voice, “Come on, El.”

Burke _felt_ before he _saw_ the way Elliot went to take his hand, like instinct, like she didn’t even have to think about it anymore.

He didn’t like it. He _especially_ didn’t like John so casually using a nickname with the rookie, like they were familiar; thinking back on it, Elliot had seemed less angry about being baptized and more angry at not getting pulled out sooner, and had said his name like they _were_ familiar, and—

He tightened his hold on her. “No,” he ground out, biting the words through his teeth.

John’s eyes flickered up to his indignantly. That spark of anger, of _fury_ , gave Burke a tiny bit of vindication. _Serves you right, you fucking psycho,_ he thought viciously, even as the Bliss pumped through his system and made it feel like every thought was being dragged through molasses.

“You don’t want to start this with me,” John said, his voice pitching low and poisonous, “ _Cameron Burke.”_

 _I know you,_ he was saying. _I know your fucking name,_ and maybe that would have bothered Burke before but it didn’t, anymore. He’d fried bigger fish than fucking John Seed, that was for sure.

“Fuck. You,” Burke spat. “ _John Seed.”_

“Stop,” Elliot said, her voice wobbling. “Stop, it’s—”

She pulled back just a little, still shivering, her gaze darting between them like she was trying to find the best way to say something; but then her eyes stayed on _Burke,_ like the person she needed to break something to was _him,_ and he felt his stomach lurch.

 _Not you too,_ he thought, faintly, somewhere in the back of his mind. _Tell me they didn’t get you too._

“John,” Joseph said, having wandered over, “we have a lot that needs to be discussed. Perhaps Faith can take them back to one of the bunkhouses in the meantime?”

“I’d be _happy_ to,” Faith said sweetly. Her voice sent a violent jolt of panic down his spine, and Burke swallowed thickly, his head snapping to the source of her voice. She looked exactly the same as she had before, when she—

“No complaints about _that?”_ John asked venomously. Burke looked at Elliot, his brows furrowing for a moment before he took her hand. He wanted to say no; he wanted to say _fuck no, no fuckin’ way I’m following that siren of yours anywhere,_ but each time his eyes darted to her, the words got caught up in his throat.

Elliot said firmly, “We’ll go with you, Faith,” and it took everything he had to not swallow back the sound of distress that tried to come out of him.

He was _Cameron Fucking Burke,_ and the idea of being remotely close to alone with Faith Seed had words failing him, his feet bolted to the ground. But Burke couldn’t tell if it was more favorable to letting John wander off with Elliot, and in the end—at least this way, they would be together.

Whatever that meant.

“Fine,” John snapped out. With Elliot no longer tangled up in Burke’s protective embrace, Joseph took this opportunity and snagged Elliot’s hand, placing it over his heart.

Joseph did not look at Burke a single time when he said, his voice slick with a rich, warm timbre that Burke was sure had to be practiced, “You make a most _beautiful_ child of Eden, Elliot.”

Elliot swallowed. Burke’s grip on her hand loosened, just for a moment, but when she threaded their fingers together for a little extra support he saw the way that her jaw was clenching and her lashes were fluttering. They hadn’t doused her in Bliss, he thought—if he could trust what he saw in the clarity of her eyes, anyway—which somehow made the allowance of Joseph’s hands on her all the worse.

When Joseph moved away, and said something lowly to Jacob, John closed what little distance remained and took Elliot’s face in his hands; Burke’s grip on her tightened, waiting for John to do something. Threaten her, grab her—anything to live up to the reputation he had so carefully and diligently created for himself.

He did not. John took Elliot’s face in his hands and he leaned in like a lover. There was a moment as he did that where Elliot’s chin tilted, taking her mouth just _that much_ out of his reach.

And they were _looking_ at each other, like that. Like it was a game. Like they had done it before; John, chasing her for a kiss, just like this, because then the man grinned half-wicked and kissed her.

 _No fucking way,_ Burke thought, and waited—waited for the kickback, for Elliot to bite him, _anything._

It didn’t come. His stomach sank. _Not you too, Rook._

“I’ll come find you,” John said into her mouth, “when I’m done.”

It should have been a threat, coming out of his mouth— _John Seed_ didn’t say shit like that without it being a _threat_ —but after he said it, he leaned in and kissed Elliot again; longer this time, his hands only dragging from her face when it was time to step back.

John’s eyes fixed on Burke as he pulled away. _Fucker,_ he thought with no absence of poison. _You fucker, you got your fucking fangs in her, you and your fucking psycho siblings, and—_

There was little time to think about it, around his anger. Elliot’s fingers stayed laced with his, and as Faith moved back up the slope to the compound and they trailed behind obediently, Burke could feel the eyes of the Seed brothers on him. Lingering. Watching. _Calculating._

Faith looked back at him over her shoulder and flashed a smile that felt more wolfish than it should have for a girl in a white dress. It made his spine crawl. She took Elliot’s free hand, interlacing their fingers and bringing Elliot’s hand up to her cheek lovingly, her lashes fluttering.

“I didn’t know you and Elliot were that close, Mr. Burke,” she said, her words sugared and echoing in ripples around him.

Burke swallowed thickly. “She’s a good kid,” he managed out hoarsely, lamely, because the second he thought about telling Faith to _go fucking die_ he felt his chest tighten. God, how long had he spent in that nightmare with her? It couldn’t have been longer than a week, maybe—but after she’d left? How many days had passed that he’d been trying to survive off of creek water and whatever food he could find in empty houses speckled across the Montana countryside?

Faith laughed. They were like a little daisy-chain, the three of them, speckling the early morning woods until they came out into the compound—and then there were eyes on them. Less than Burke remembered. Where had the rest of them gone?

“Well, that’s certainly right,” Faith continued, turning to face them and walking backwards as they slipped under the intricate white trellis caging the majority of the yard.

She stopped walking; Burke would have nearly ran her over if he hadn’t been paying so much attention to how _close_ she was to him. With deliberate honeyed timbre, Faith murmured, “We _love_ her around these parts,” and planted a chaste kiss on Elliot’s fingers, tangled with her own. “Just ask John.”

“We’re here,” Elliot said, a little too quickly to be casual, to be _normal,_ and Faith shot her a sly look before she turned around and opened the door to the bunkhouse. Inside, it was mostly bare; as they walked in, Elliot released both of their hands, and Burke could see a duffel bag unzipped and laying open on the nearby tiny table, filled with a few books and clothes.

 _Like she was planning on staying,_ he thought tiredly, _at least for a little while._

“Play nice, you two,” Faith said from the doorway.

The door clicked shut. They were left in silence for a moment, Elliot gathering up some of her things and putting them back into the duffel bag—like she was trying to tidy up her home for an unexpected guest. The idea of it made Burke’s stomach wrench.

“Hey, you don’t—” He started.

“—’m sorry, it’s—”

They both stopped. Burke rubbed his hands over his face, exhaling through his mouth.

“Let’s,” he tried again, “start from the beginning.”

“Okay,” Elliot murmured, swallowing thickly. “Okay, I can do that.”

“Great.” Burke pulled the chair out from the table and sat down; the world sighed in relief around him when he did, woozy and dreamy and _green_ —all green, except for Elliot, in that blue fucking dress.

“Go on, then.”

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“What the fuck was that?!”

John could _feel_ it—he could feel the strain, the _anger_ , bubbling high in his voice, pulling _tightightight_ until he thought it might snap. The second the three of them got into the chapel, Jacob sauntered toward the front as though nothing had occurred at all, as if it were business as normal.

“John,” Joseph cautioned, his voice pensive.

“No, I’m _really_ curious,” John seethed, soaking wet and freezing, “why it is our brother felt the need to bring the U.S. Marshal back _alive._ ”

“‘I’ve got it under control’,” the redhead intoned, his voice coming out flat and biting, “isn’t that what you said, Johnny?”

John stared at his eldest brother. There was just a shred of his self-control left—just one _tiny shred_ , and the only reason he still had it was because the look on Burke’s stupid fucking face when he’d kissed Elliot was singularly propelling him along.

This was bad. It was bad, because Elliot was still in a fragile state of being: she was still _thinking_ about things rather than just doing what felt good and right, and that was the most troublesome fucking thing about her—that those gears were always turning, always rattling around, even when he managed to make them go the other way for a moment.

He didn’t want her gears shut off. He wanted them _working for him._

“I’m—” John sucked in a sharp breath. “Burke was supposed to be _dead._ This is an unprecedented— _”_

“If everything’s under control, then why the fuck is Burke being alive a problem?” Jacob replied sharply. “I’m thinking about the long game, John. I’m thinking about sending you to live underground in a fucking bunker with her and some of our people. But mostly—” His voice came out between gritted teeth. “—I’m thinking about _us._ You know, our family? You’ve been acting like a loose-fucking-cannon this whole Goddamn time, and if one person Elliot’s known for a handful of days is going to derail your entire operation, _maybe you don’t have everything under control.”_

 _Fuck you,_ John thought viciously, but the words wouldn’t come; they stayed strangled in his throat, because a part of him said maybe Jacob was _right,_ and maybe that meant that things weren’t going to go as well as he planned.

He pushed the thoughts from his head just in time for Joseph to say, “I do find this troubling.”

John took in another short, sharp breath. “It’s not a _problem,”_ he insisted, feeling more than a little frantic. “It’s _not._ You just—you don’t see what it’s like when—”

“John,” Joseph said, sounding almost tired now, “she looked right at you and chose Burke instead.”

“She _didn’t!_ She didn’t _choose_ Burke, she just—she _just_ —” He swallowed thickly. “She wants me to reveal her sin. Why would she do that if she didn’t want to be with me? With us? She wouldn’t just _say_ that, and—and maybe seeing Burke again made her feel something different, but it’s like you said, Joseph, she’s strangling the person she used to be and that’s—”

“She’s _becoming_ ,” his older brother articulated, “more trouble than she’s worth.”

“And might even be a _bigger_ problem,” Jacob added, “isn’t that right, John?”

John’s mouth twisted as he tried to figure out what exactly it was Jacob was alluding to. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, you’re not using protection when you’re fucking her, are you?” the redhead snapped, and Joseph sighed—a long, suffering sound. John didn’t _want_ to feel shame, but when Joseph tilted his head to the gray morning light filtering through the chapel’s window as though for a respite from this conversation, he _did._

Jacob plunged on, “And since you felt the need to kick your fucking window open the other night, I got a real good idea of how much self-control you _actually_ have when it comes to preventing problems.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re practically _begging_ for a mishap.”

 _No,_ he thought furiously, pushing the memory of Elliot gripping his jaw and telling him to beg for it out of his head, _no, this is not how this fucking goes. This is not how this goes at all._

“I’m finishing Elliot’s baptism,” he bit out. “She’s _mine_ —”

His brain halted and stuttered on the words, and when his brothers looked at him, he amended, “My _wife,_ and she’ll join us. She will. She almost already has. I have it _under. Control.”_

For a moment, silence reigned supreme. Finally, Joseph said, “We are out of time, John.”

“We’re not, we planned for at _least_ another week of reaping.”

“That was _for emergencies only_ ,” Jacob bit out. “What, you want to fucking push the end of the world?”

“One week,” Joseph interjected. “You have one week. I want our deputy’s sin revealed, I want her converted, I want her under control.” His voice was hard now, flinty and unforgiving, when he looked at John. “If she is _not_ , John—”

“She will be.”

“If she _isn’t,”_ he continued, his mouth twisting, “you understand the consequences.”

_The Gates of Eden will be closed to you._

John swallowed thickly. “Yes, Joseph.”

Joseph looked at him for a long moment—a moment of suffering, of John waiting for something, _anything_ that would indicate where the conversation was going to go. Blessedly, Jacob remained silent too, and another set of agonizing heartbeats passed before Joseph spoke again.

“We will be collecting the last of the supplies from Fall’s End and anything within quick reach,” he said, looking down at the map on the table and adjusting it. “You have until then, John.”

He opened his mouth to say something, his mind scrambling; _I will, Joseph, I can do this, I know I can,_ but his older brother lifted his hands to stop him.

“We’re done here,” Joseph said. “Leave us, John.” And then, almost as though to soften the blow of his words: “You’re going to catch ill if you stay in those wet clothes.”

John swallowed thickly. He looked at Jacob for a moment; his words were still ringing in his head. _I’m thinking about us. You know, our family?_

“Yes, Joseph,” he managed out after a moment, turning and heading toward the door, the sound of his footsteps echoing lonely and cold in the mostly-empty chapel.

 _I am too,_ he thought. _I’m thinking about us too._

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Burke’s head was in his hands.

He was disappointed.

All things considered, Elliot thought that maybe this was the best way this conversation could have gone. After all, Burke wasn’t her father; he was just a man, a U.S. Marshal, and at one point in time he’d talked her through a firefight with a bunch of cultists and then she thought she’d died but she hadn’t. That didn’t make it any different from telling any other person about this, right?

But that was wrong. It _was_ different. Because Burke had looked at her file—he saw her restraining order, her psych eval—and the only thing he’d said to her was he was glad she was around and she’d kicked ass at the Academy. It was the first time she’d ever felt anything close to _regular_ with someone who wasn’t Joey Hudson. Even Whitehorse hadn’t stopped looking at her like she was a loaded fucking gun.

“So what now?” she asked after a moment, shifting on her feet. She’d rushed through changing into dry clothes in the bathroom and came back out to tell him everything—about the other cult, about Joey. About John, too.

She’d skipped over that part as much as she could. Now that she thought about it, she’d had to muck painfully through a _lot_ of things she had been trying to tell Burke.

“You see, don’t you?” Burke asked, lifting his head from his hands. “You see that they’re fuckin’ with you, right?”

Elliot sat down on the floor, her back pressed up against the bunk. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment, and he groaned.

“ _Rook.”_

“I mean it, Burke,” she protested, her chest tightening at the pure, unadulterated exasperation in his voice. “It’s—if you saw the way Joseph talks to him, and... The things he said to me—”

“You mean the things that the _cult lawyer_ said to you?” Burke asked. “You’re smart, Rookie. Too smart to fall for this shit.”

Elliot’s stomach wrenched violently at his words. “Well—” She started, her voice hitching. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Burke, I—I _tried_ , you know, I did it fucking by myself for this whole time, alone, and then they took Joey from me and I—” She sucked in a sharp breath. Her brain felt like it was rattling around in her skull, pain pounding behind her eyes; the most unforgivable crime had been committed, that of letting down one of the only people who looked at her like she was _normal_ , and _she_ had been the one to commit it.

“Rook.”

“I—” She felt her lashes flutter, her heart stuttering against her ribs in a painful mockery of what her heartbeat should have been. “I f-fucking—I f—”

Cameron said, gentler, “Elliot.”

“I f-fucking _tried,”_ she told him vehemently around the wobble, and she pulled her knees up to her chest, _I’m just a girl, I’m just a girl, this wasn’t supposed to be my life._ How was she supposed to say to Burke that sometimes, she felt like she was a passenger to herself—sometimes, the world felt like it was splitting in half and more than once John Seed had taken her face in his hands and put her back together, let her dig her nails and teeth into him to feel real? How was she supposed to tell him and make him understand?

All of those times, and the way John had said, _I want a home with you,_ and the way he said, _I’m yours,_ and—

“I know,” Burke said, his voice quieter now. “I know, kid, I—”

But she shook her head, because he _didn’t_ know, not really. “I _tried,_ even though I was alone, and now I’m—now you’re here, but I’m... I’m _t-this_ and I don’t have anything left and John, he—h—h—”

He swallowed, coming down off of the chair to sit next to her. Burke’s hands found one of hers, still cold and chilly from the river and maybe from something else and brought it to his neck. She could feel his heartbeat there; just like before, it was fast, but steady as his body burned through the Bliss he’d been exposed to.

“How long’s it been?” he asked. “Since we tried arresting that psycho.”

“I don’t know,” Elliot managed out, having mimicked Burke’s breathing patterns already, without thinking very hard about it. “Two weeks? The—season changed—”

“Yeah. Leaves falling. Maybe two, probably closer to three,” Burke murmured, sighing and rubbing his face with his free hand. “Fuck. This whole thing’s gone to shit. My guys—they should be swinging in here any minute now.”

“Your—guys?” she asked.

“Yeah. You know, the government?” Burke looked at her for a moment. “What, you think they just send a guy in and he fucks off for three weeks and no one asks what’s up?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Elliot replied uncertainly. Of course the government was going to come and figure out what happened. They’d sent a U.S. Marshal to arrest a man leading a cult. Why wouldn’t they try and check in and see what was going on when he failed to show up? “Jerome always said that—it was just up to us now.”

Burke _tsked_ his tongue, shaking his head. “Yeah, well, that’s his—that's a small-town militia, you know. And in his defense, shit was pretty fucked up. No phone lines? No signals? Feels apocalyptic.”

“Yeah,” Elliot whispered, remembering Dutch’s words, “yeah, it does.”

He stared at her for a moment longer, finally letting her hand go but not moving from their close proximity, like maybe he was afraid she was going to teeter off the edge again at any moment. She didn’t _like_ that feeling. She didn’t _like_ thinking maybe Burke was starting to be afraid of her, the way that Whitehorse had been afraid of her.

“We gotta play it normal,” Burke said after a moment, rubbing his face with one hand. “You and me both, kid. You sounded like you had a plan, before?”

She nodded after a moment, clearing her throat. “I was going to go through with the whole… Baptism, or whatever, and then try and get to this radio they have in the chapel,” she explained. “John’s been—I told him I want to leave, but I didn’t tell him that I planned on trying to get in touch with someone.”

The older man watched her, his dark eyes quiet. Finally, he nodded. “That’s good. You stay not telling him, got it?”

“Okay,” she said, and there was a wash of _relief_ that flooded her. It reminded her that she wasn’t, by any means, someone who wanted to be in a leadership position—she didn’t _like_ making executive decisions. The only reason she’d made it this far was because she’d been making executive decisions for bare-minimum survival. The idea of getting to the radio had only just been rooted in her brain, the ticking of the channels scanning the only noise that had been in the chapel the last time she and Joseph had been alone.

When John had left them alone, because Joseph had _told_ him to.

_I want a home with you._

But she wasn’t sure that John did—not in the way that he was letting her think. It was easy to think all of these things when it was just her and all she had to rely on was her own murky brain, but what about now? What about now that she had to look at Burke and explain how she’d caved a man’s skull in with an empty gun?

Joseph was right. There was no life for her, not really, not after this; not after everything she had done. But that didn’t mean she had to let him get off free, either.

“Play it normal,” Burke said again, lower this time. “Whatever you have to do to keep them focused on you, but not _suspicious_ of you. Don’t bother with the radio—I’ll figure something out. Sounds like it might be a military kinda radio, could have better luck if I try to get in there and see if anyone’s even in the area.”

“And what about—” Elliot paused. When the dark-haired man waited expectantly, she took in a little breath and said, “What about John?”

Burke stared at her for a moment, working his jaw before he exhaled sharply, letting his head loll a little. He clearly didn’t enjoy what he was going to say next, and Elliot worked her fingers against her palm absently, worrying the muscle there.

“Not making any promises. That man’s got a rap sheet about three times longer than whatever you’re convinced you’ve done,” he said finally. “But _if_ he cuts a deal—agrees to testify against his brothers and Faith, no holds-barred, _maybe_ there’ll be a lighter sentencing in there. Not a non-existent one. Just a _lighter_ one. I don’t fuckin’ know, I’m not a lawyer and I’m not gonna put my ass on the line for that fuckhead.”

She nodded. It just confirmed for her what she had been afraid was already true—that maybe it had been over-ambitious to think she and John could just up and leave. At least, now that she knew that _someone_ was coming to clean up this mess.

Regardless, it felt good to talk to someone who wasn’t a Seed—and it made her painfully aware of how much she _missed_ Joey, a deep and bottomless grief that kept swallowing her up over and over. Just like that, it felt like the scales had fallen from her eyes. Like Saul.

“You should probably try to avoid talking to me,” he continued after a moment. “Make up something about how—I’m a big asshole, or something.”

“So tell the truth,” Elliot ventured, a little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Burke rolled his eyes and nudged her with his foot.

“You always been this mouthy?” he asked, taking a swig from the water bottle she’d given to him to try and help his sobering gentle up a little.

She said, “Only with people I like.”

“Cute.”

A moment of quiet silence passed, comfortable and easy, before Burke reached over and gripped her shoulder with his gloved hand. She looked at him, and for a second, something crumpled in his expression.

“Elliot,” he said, his voice lower, “I’m sorry. For all of this—fuckin’ garbage you’ve had to do.”

She blinked at him, feeling a warm, fresh feeling expand and grow in her chest. It was sadness, she realized too late, the tears already starting to burn in her eyes; sadness, and a little bit of relief, because she couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her and said they were sorry she had suffered.

“It’s fine,” she said automatically, without thinking, because it was—she was here, and breathing, and fine, so that meant it was fine, right?

Burke shook his head and said, more firmly, “I never wanted to leave you alone, kid. I mean it. And I’m not gonna let that happen again, okay? You and me, we’re a team.”

Elliot swallowed back a hiccuping little cry and nodded her head, passing a hand over her eyes just once so that she could gather herself and push the tears back. Burke hauled her in and gave her a firm, one-armed squeeze.

“Said we’re gonna get the fuck out of here,” he said into her hair. “And I fuckin’ meant it.”

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When John returned to the bunkhouse—the one that had become _his_ base of operations, not _Elliot’s_ —she was there.

“I’m surprised,” were the first words that came out of his mouth, before his brain even had time to register in what order the sensory details were coming into his brain. First that she was there at all, without Burke, giving him a pleasant little thrill; second, that she seemed to have shucked a sweater and jeans in favor of sporting only _his shirt_ , loosely buttoned up just far enough to cover her but not all the way to the top; third, that she was tucked up in the bed like that was where she was supposed to be always.

And it was where she was supposed to be, always. Where he could have her.

Elliot’s eyes flickered up from the book she’d been reading. He tried to catch the title of it, but she dog-eared the page and tossed it onto the floor face down before he could.

“About?” she prompted. He let the door swing shut behind him and moved to the bed, stepping out of his shoes before making his way to the dresser so he could get out of his wet clothes.

“Well,” John said casually, trying not to let the words sting on their way out, “I thought you’d still be with Burke. You know. _Visiting.”_

Whatever the fuck _that_ meant. He still hadn’t shaken the irritation at hearing Burke tell _him_ no—like he had any idea what kind of person Elliot was, like he had some kind of claim on her. It had taken everything in him not to blurt out that Elliot was _his_ wife, _his_ girl, _his—_

“We did,” Elliot replied. Her eyes were on him as he changed and then doubled-back across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. She snagged his hand as it slid up her bare thigh and brought it to the juncture between her neck and shoulder; his thumb swept along the front of her throat. “Visit, I mean.”

“And yet, here you are.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

John hummed, low and non-committal, before he leaned in and pressed his mouth to her neck. She sighed; he dragged his lips downward, tracing over each bruise there from Kian’s hands; things he had memorized, that he thought he could tell Elliot liked, because her breath hitched in her lungs when he did. Maybe it felt like he was erasing Kian from her, or maybe she just liked the sting.

“I can’t imagine Burke’s very thrilled with our...” His words trailed off. “...Recently-developed relationship.”

“You’re right. He’s not,” she said, and she nudged him back so that he was sitting upright and she could swing herself onto his lap. This close, with her arms draped over his shoulders, John could smell the faded scent of his cologne on her; his hands slid up beneath the hem of the shirt to splay against the dips of her spine, and he nuzzled the hollow of her throat. “He’s—protective, that’s all.”

“So what did you talk about tonight?” he asked. He pressed his mouth to the spot just below her ear that made her squirm in his lap. “You and _daddy Burke.”_

Elliot guided his face to hers and kissed him; but it was an _unkind_ kiss, and she dragged her teeth against his lower lip until John made a low noise at the punishing pace of the kiss, and she said, “Do _not_ call him ‘daddy Burke’ _,_ John.”

“Fine,” he defended against her mouth, “I won’t, I’m just curious as to the nature of your conversation. And your relationship.”

“Yeah? Okay, I told him that I let you fuck me filthy in a variety of places, sometimes covered in another man’s blood,” Elliot snipped. “What do you _think_ I said?”

“It’d be pretty good if you said _that.”_

When her mouth left his, he made a small sound of complaint; she trailed her lips down his throat, and she smoothed her hands along the bare skin of his chest, fingers dipping and running along the curves of his scars, tracing the shape of the tattoos that he knew were there. She didn’t need to look at them to know their shape now.

“El,” he murmured when she nudged him back until he was laying on the bed and she could trace the lines of his Sloth scar with her mouth. The second he felt her tongue flickering against his skin, he felt a bloom of heat spread through him. “El, I want to talk about—”

“So talk,” Elliot replied, and then she kissed a spot on his chest reverently. “If you want. _I_ want to enjoy you.”

John exhaled sharply out of his mouth. He’d never gotten to indulge a more _wanton_ Elliot—their moments had always been heated, slipping through his fingers, faster than he would have liked and more brutal than he would have thought—but _this_ was different. She was in his shirt, and she smelled like him, and her breath fanned hot against his skin and she was touching him like he was—

Something good. Something _holy._

“Are you distracting me?” John managed out, just as Elliot settled back on his lap, and _fuck_ that was so unfair, watching the shoulder of his shirt slouch off of her, too big and a little loose from being worn, just as she pressed herself against him. “So that you don’t have to—t-to—”

“To?” Elliot replied. “Talk about Burke? I told you, I want us to have—” She paused, lashes fluttering for a moment, and then rested her chin there on his chest. “I don’t plan on going through the system and the paperwork after this. Not after everything I’ve…”

John sat up a little, looking at her. The blonde moved seamlessly with him—no clunking movements, no awkward tangle of their limbs; when her attention was fully on him and nothing else, it felt like they had been made for each other, like they had always been each other’s fate.

“What if—” He stopped, watching her. “What if we didn’t do…Any of that?”

Elliot regarded him for a moment, a little tense. “What do you mean?”

“What if we stayed,” John ventured, “here?”

She blinked. Sat on his lap, wearing his shirt, her cheeks warm and her eyes bright and clear, John might have had more apprehension about saying the words out loud. But this time, it wasn’t like he was coming clean about a lie—it was more like… Shifting plans. Just a little. Just testing the waters, that was all.

“So what if we did?” Elliot said at last, watching him.

“We could just stay,” he murmured, taking her face in his hands. “You and me. We could just stay, the two of us, and—”

“Stay with your brothers,” Elliot clarified, “one of which is a cult leader.”

“Well—”

“And the other being a Darwinian elitist who admitted, out loud, he wanted to kill me ‘more than anything’.”

“That’s just Jacob,” John relented.

“This is _not_ what we talked about,” Elliot said, her brows furrowing. “We did not discuss staying here with your—psychotic brothers—”

He felt the way her voice pitched up, felt it high in her throat, like a panic; her little rabbit heart fluttering hard and fast, and he leaned in and kissed her, felt the dig of her nails in his arms where she gripped him.

She said, “John,” into his mouth, a warning; one single warning, and that was all he was going to get, his little rattlesnake. He knew her well-enough by now.

“You and I both know that there isn’t a normal life waiting for us,” he said urgently, against her lips. “We both know that. I know that you don’t want to sit down in a bunker—”

“ _Stop_ —”

“—but regardless of what you think of my family, they _understand_ you, Elliot—”

The blonde shook her head, her nose brushing his as she did so. “No. Fuck that, John. Fuck that, and fuck you for—”

“For what?” he demanded, pulling back to look at her. “Wanting to be around people who get it? You’ve killed a _hundred_ people—maybe more, fuck if I know. I _see_ the way you get. I’ve _been_ there, and you know I have, and we can have that safety. We can have a _place to belong,_ Elliot.”

She slid out of his lap. Her fingers carded through her hair; she looked like she was trying to parse through something, pinning out the wings of a butterfly that she couldn’t quite get a grasp on. _Come on,_ he thought, _come on, Elliot, come on, you’re mine and you know it._

Elliot turned to look at him. She looked emotional—her nose and cheeks were pinker, her bottom lashes dotted with unshed tears. It pleased him a little, to see her like this; before, she’d worked so very hard to make sure he never did.

“No,” she said, standing in his shirt, one arm across her chest and the other propped on it while she dug her thumb nail into her lip. “No, I’m not fucking doing it, John. I’m not getting in a bunker with your fucking peggies—”

He sighed, passing a hand over his face. “Elliot—”

“—and I’m sure as _fuck,”_ she bit out, “not asking Joseph to take me in. _Fuck_. _That.”_

“You are _impossible,”_ John ground out.

“I am _literally_ the _most_ flexible person!” Elliot exclaimed, her voice bordering on hysteria; _there_ , something in him said, _there’s the switch, there’s the flip, all that venom she’d been holding onto_. “There’s nobody more go-with-the-fucking-flow than _me,_ John Seed. Oh, a second cult takes over my hometown? Cool, I’ll evacuate everyone. Oh, they have my best friend captive? The one that _you_ were supposed to be taking care of? Whatevs, it’s _super fucking cool_ , she’s fucking _dead_ and my family’s gone and everyone I’ve ever known is fucking _gone,_ might as well be _dead_ , and I can’t fucking go see them. I can’t, because I’m fucking—”

She sucked in a breath, dragging her hands through her hair. “I’m fucking _covered_ ,” she seethed, “in _blood_ , I will _never_ be normal again, and none of this would have fucking—”

“Elliot,” John started, coming to a stand, because he didn’t want her to say it; he didn’t want her to say _none of this would have happened if it weren’t for you,_ but he felt it, right there, sitting between them. “Hellcat, come here.”

“No.” Her voice broke. “No, I’m so fucking tired of coming to you, John.”

“Then _I’ll_ come to you,” he insisted. Maybe it was a little dirty—maybe he was thinking, _this is perfect, I need her just like this, raw and desperate and turbulent_ , and when he crossed the small space between them and reached for her she didn’t shy away from him; just turned her face and fixed her eyes on the wall. “Joseph gave me _everything,_ ” he said urgently, pressing their foreheads together. “In a way—he even brought _you_ to me. I don’t want to stay here forever. So what if the world doesn’t end? Then we get out of the bunker and we go wherever we want to go.”

“This is fucking insane,” Elliot said, her voice wrecked. She sounded so _tired._ “That you’re even asking me to—”

“I’m asking,” John clarified, “for you to be realistic. About the things that you’ve done. That I’ve done. At _least_ —” He turned her face to look at him, and he thought, _come on, you little viper, come on. So fucking close, we’re so close._ “—tell me you’ll think about it.”

She watched him and sucked her teeth. He could hear the draconian gears in her head turning—churning, grinding, and hopefully for _his_ benefit.

Elliot said, “How long do I have to think about it?”

“A week,” he replied earnestly. “I can’t reveal your sin until these bruises clear up a little, anyway.” He reached up, skimming his fingers along the wine-colored bruises dappling her skin. Her lashes, soft and damp, fluttered; she worked something in her jaw, molars grinding as she stared at him, like she couldn’t figure out what it was she wanted to say to him.

Finally, she said, “I don’t like feeling like this was what you wanted all along.”

“I meant it when I said I wanted a home with you,” John replied, and it wasn’t a lie.

“If I tell you I want to go,” she began, “then what?”

 _That won’t happen._ “Then we go,” he murmured. “You and me.”

Elliot nodded once. Her mouth twisted, like she wanted to say something else, but when John leaned in to kiss her, her expression relaxed a little; he felt it like a sigh, his fingers knotting into the hair at the base of her skull.

“I’ll tell you,” she said into the kiss, “what I decide. When I decide.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “I told you, Elliot—"

"I know." This close, their foreheads pressed together, he could feel her lips brushing his with each word.

"Anything I want."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm out on tumblr @proudspires making a fool of myself, memes, and dumb content all the time!


	21. what went we

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A fallen star will be thy bane,  
> I call you by your ancient names."  
>  _Ancient Names pt. 1,_ Lord Huron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter include mentions of self-harm, some slight gore/blood (it's very mild), sexually explicit content.

John was lying to her.

Or, at the very least, he was _withholding information_ from her, which was just about as bad as lying, Elliot thought. She didn’t know what _exactly_ he wasn’t forthcoming about—but did it matter, at this point? She could _tell_ he was lying; he’d been all kinds of ready to leave and go and get out of Hope County, and now he was scrounging up some kind of ass-pull reason for them to stay. So _did_ it matter? Did the distinction count?

 _Yes,_ she thought absently, as John’s fingers traced slow, lazy circles along the small of her back. _Yes, I have to know what he’s lying to me about._

“Good morning,” John murmured against her neck. “How did you sleep?”

It had been three days since her baptism-gone-awry, three days of Burke occupying the bunkhouse she had been in while she had wordlessly moved into John’s space, three days of avoiding eye contact with the marshal and deferring questions about him. _I don’t know, I really only knew him for a day,_ she’d say when John asked, or _does it matter if I told him? He wouldn’t get it,_ the unspoken words being ‘not like you do’. She hoped, anyway.

Three days of trying to figure out what it was John wasn’t telling her.

“Like shit,” she replied tiredly as his mouth trailed along the curve of her shoulderblade. The pressure of his fingers against her sternum had her rolling onto her back to look up at him; his gaze swept over the exposed skin.

“Bruising’s clearing up,” he said, his voice low and rough from sleep. But he didn’t elaborate; he didn’t say, _should we reveal your sin today, my love?_ the way that she thought he would try. It felt as though the gears in her head were still sluggishly turning, trying to piece together the entire picture of what was going on, a picture that she felt like John didn’t want her to see.

She knew exactly how it would go if she asked. _What’s the game?_ she’d say, and John would look at her with _those_ eyes, and lean in to kiss her, and he’d say, _no game, hellcat,_ and she’d have to believe him because she didn’t have any _empirical_ evidence that he was lying to her. Just a feeling, deep in her gut, twisting and wrenching.

It made it worse to know that John was looking at her with adoration.

Trailing a lazy circle below her collarbone with his fingertips, John asked, “Do you want to do it today?” and she stifled a sigh.

“I don’t know yet, about staying,” she replied, even though she did know: she wouldn’t. She would die before she crawled into a stupid fucking bunker at the behest of Joseph Seed. “I want to wait.”

John’s eyes flickered a little at her words, but he nodded. Elliot reached up, catching her hand with his and skimming the pads of her thumbs along his palm. The words sat there on the tip of her tongue: _what aren’t you telling me? Why can’t you just tell me? Haven’t we been through enough, the two of us?_

“Your heartline,” Elliot said instead, forcing her voice into playfulness because she couldn’t stop thinking about how Burke had told her to carry on as she had been. “Have you ever had your palm read?”

“No,” he answered amusedly, letting her nail skim along the curve of the line on his palm. “Are you an expert in palmistry?”

“My mama used to entertain tarot cards and palm readers with her ladies,” she replied. “So I listened in a lot. I suppose it isn’t very _Godly_ to have your palm read.”

“It isn’t.” John’s eyes glittered. “But go ahead and tell me what mine says.”

She shifted a little against the pillows. On the floor by her side of the bed, Boomer let out a long, suffering sigh—like he was tired of listening to this flirtation already. For a small second in time, that feeling of peace swept over her, and she let herself bask in it. Elliot thought that she deserved _that_ much at least.

“Your heartline shows your personality, and your quality of love,” she explained, skimming her finger along his heartline. “Yours comes all the way over, see? All the way across your palm.”

“Is that good?”

“Very,” Elliot said somberly. “It shows you have an abundance of love, and _high_ expectations.”

John worked his jaw a little, clearly trying not to smile like he was proud of himself—like he had any control over the lines of his palm and how they worked. “I could have told you that.”

“ _And_ it curves upward,” she continued. “Which means you have great verbal dexterity.”

“I could have also told you _that.”_

“Undoubtedly,” she deadpanned. “Are you going to let me finish my reading?”

He flashed his teeth at her in a grin. “Please,” he said, “continue.”

Elliot clicked her tongue, turning her attention back to his hand. Inspecting for a moment, she said, “You have a upward split here, you see? That means you’re willing to sacrifice a lot for love.”

John rumbled his agreement at the statement and leaned down, kissing her shoulder.

“And these little forks here,” she added, pressing her thumb against them, “indicates a dispute on marriage.” Her eyes lifted to his, playful. “Are you intending on _marrying_ , John? Palm says that’s a bad idea.”

For a second, John stared at her—his eyes fluttered, and he looked like he was collecting himself. Elliot sat up a little, frowning, but when she did it seemed to trigger whatever it was that was needed for him to come back to being present. Interlacing their fingers together, he pulled her forward and kissed her; and kissed her, and kissed her, until her lungs ached and she thought she was getting dizzy from not being able to take a full breath. His free hand slid down between her legs; when her lips parted to allow her to whimper, John’s teeth caught her lower lip with bruising force.

Already, heat was pooling in the pit of her stomach. Already, she could feel those telltale signs of _desire_ , the way that John inspired it in her with just a few simple gestures.

“Want you,” John said against her mouth, guiding her onto him, settling her on his lap. Something was _wrong,_ something she’d said had struck a strange nerve in him; but undeniably, it felt _good,_ that his hands were trembling whenever his grip on her lessened a little. It felt good, because it felt like he _needed_ her.

“Reading my palm is a cute trick, but—”

“How badly?” Elliot asked, before she could stop herself. John’s eyes, dark with want, raked over her as the sheets bunched at her hips. When she rocked her hips against his inquisitively, a low, strangled noise came out of him. “How badly do you want me?”

“You’re—in a mood,” John managed out. He opened his mouth to keep talking—something insufferable, Elliot was sure—but as he did, she adjusted and sank down against him, drawing out of him a low, vicious moan. His fingers dug into her hips and he hissed, “ _Wicked_ thing.”

She slid him out of her, and he groaned, miserable.

“How badly?” she asked again, less cloying this time. There was a strange kind of satisfaction that wound up in her, hot and humid, when John let her do this—let her _take_ , let her sink her nails and her teeth into him wherever and however she wanted. Like he knew exactly what it was she needed and didn’t mind giving it to her.

 _Liar,_ something inside of her said, _he’s a fucking liar, there’s something he isn’t telling us,_ but then John looked at her and said, “ _So_ badly, more than anything, Elliot,” and her chest tightened.

Her fingers found his shoulder and she tugged him up into a sitting position. Her mouth found his; she tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled just as their hips slotted together and she sighed his name in a hitching breath. The delicious burn was almost enough to fizz her focus out of existence—with so little sleep on her agenda, it was hard enough, but then she canted her hips wantingly and sparks of red-hot pleasure went racing up her spine.

 _“So. Fucking. Tight,”_ John ground out, burying his face against her neck. “Can’t believe you’re mine, El—can’t—after all of this—”

Elliot’s lashes fluttered at his words, the uneasy sprint of happiness making her stomach churn. Something else, though, wrenched around the cavity of her chest—those words. _Can’t believe you’re mine._

“John,” she managed out, breathless, “I—”

“—and I’m yours.” John kissed her and guided her hips down against him until she was moaning unsteadily. “ _Fuck,_ yes, I’m—all yours, baby, just take w-what you—need from me, give you anything, anything—”

 _I’m all yours,_ he said, in the same breath as _can’t believe you’re mine,_ and it shouldn’t have but it felt different: in that moment, having John buried into her up to the hilt and digging his fingers into her skin and sighing her name, it shouldn’t have felt different, but it did. It did, because they _belonged_ _to_ _each other._

Her fingers tightened in his hair, on his shoulder. She thought, _he’s a liar,_ and she thought, _I’m so afraid of losing him, too,_ and she thought, _we belong to each other._

“Please,” Elliot moaned, but she didn’t know what she was asking for; to finish, to hear him say it again, to hear him say more, to tell her the complete and absolute truth? Did it matter, anymore?

_It does matter. The distinction matters._

So she said, “You’re mine,” and she kissed him, and she said it again, and again, like a prayer _;_ until John was saying it back, feverish and panting the delicious words against her skin, _I’m yours, I’m yours, all yours._

Wicked, and wretched, and maybe a liar, but all hers.

Later, tangled together in bed, John pulled her flush against him and said against her skin, “Don’t you want it, too?”

“I do,” Elliot murmured, knowing that he was talking about the _Wrath_ he was going to put into her skin. “There’s just... A lot after that, to think about. And I know you’ll want an answer right away—”

“Is it that hard?” he asked. “To make a decision about staying or leaving?”

“What the fuck kind of question is that?”

John frowned. “I just—”

“You _just_ want me to say yes to whatever it is you want,” Elliot snapped. “I’d like to remind you that you _told_ me we’d go as soon as this was done.”

“I know,” he said quickly. “I know, Elliot. I’m just—”

And then he paused, like something wanted to come out of him that he didn’t want to say, like he’d caught himself before he’d make a fool of himself. All this time, and Elliot thought she’d never see John vulnerable, not _really_ in the way that she wanted—he’d seen her crying and broken and grieving, and she’d seen him in intimate glimpses, but not completely.

“You’re just what?” she asked, brows pulling together.

John’s fingers traced along her sternum, spelling out _WRATH,_ much like he had done that evening at her mother’s house.

“They’re my family,” he said after a moment. “He gave me everything.”

Something uncomfortable twisted in her chest. “I know.”

“That includes you, too.” John leaned down and kissed her shoulder. “He brought me you. I know you don’t believe, hellcat, but if nothing happens then what did we lose? Nothing. I just get to keep my family.”

Her lashes fluttered, exhaustion seeping over her bones again. It was late into the morning, but already she wanted to close her eyes.

“I told you before,” she whispered. “I told you. You can’t have both. You can’t put one foot in both worlds, John.”

His mouth pressed into a thin line. He ducked his head against her neck and kissed there, and she thought about what he’d said that night in the bar.

_Outside of my loyalty to Joseph, there’s you, and I want both._

_I want you too, Elliot._

_We can have a place to belong._

She thought about Jerome’s voice over the radio. _You don’t have to Atlas this thing, deputy._

She thought about Joey, holding her tight. _I never doubted you’d be able to get me._

She thought about how, at twenty-five, she had to bury her best friend in the fucking ground.

John was lying to her about something. He wasn’t telling her everything, and maybe she had always known that it would be like this, between them: maybe, down in the marrow of her bones, she had always known they would end up at odds with each other, John trapped between two worlds that he wanted and neither side willing to budge.

 _Something has to be done,_ she thought tiredly, as John’s fingers smoothed along her hip, _and I’m going to have to fucking do it._

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

“You’ve gotta get them out of here, Rook.”

Burke’s words stayed there, lingering in the air between them. It was late in the afternoon, and John was with his brothers and Faith in the chapel, and she’d ducked into Burke’s bunkhouse between guard shifts to grab a quick word with him. As soon as she told him that John had been pushing to get her sin revealed sooner than the original week he’d told her, Burke’s frown had deepened.

“They’re planning on getting it over with and getting the fuck out,” he said, pacing the tiny bunkhouse room. “There’s no way I’m getting to that radio with them all here. They think the world’s going to end, and that they need to be in their bunkers to survive it. If they get locked in there, Elliot, then—”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to get them _all_ out of here,” she replied irritably. “You do realize that I’m only—John’s the only—”

Burke waved his hand to stop her from elaborating. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to discuss the nature of her relationship with John beyond what the base information: they had indulged in a physical relationship, and an emotional one, and now Elliot’s priorities included him. As best they could.

“He wants to do the… Ceremony,” Elliot continued, mouth twisting around the only word she could think to say without making it macabre, “soon. And I just think that if I push it all the way out, then it’ll stir up suspicion, after I told him I wanted to—”

“What if you didn’t?”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“What if you _didn’t_ push it out?” Burke continued, slowly, pitching his voice quieter and more urgent when he noticed movement outside. “What if you asked for it to be done sooner? But just—somewhere else? Not here? Make up something about how you don’t have good memories here, and…”

“And ask for his family to be there,” Elliot finished, “so that they have to leave you here?”

Burke nodded. His gaze darted to the window again, and she knew that they were running out of time. “You’ll still be guarded.”

“I can handle a few of these fuckers,” he replied, waving his hand. “Most of them are scattered out, getting supplies. I hear them complaining about it outside all the time. I’ll get that radio, see if I can hear any chatter, and tell them where to find you. ”

 _I need more time,_ she thought, but she knew that she wouldn’t get it. Not now. Her deadline had been set for her—by Joseph, by John, and even a little bit by Burke. She was _this_ close to being done, to being—

_Free._

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, yes, I can do that. I’ll ask them to take me to the ranch, and—I can do that.”

“I know,” Burke said, and he had never sounded more confident; he planted his hands on her shoulders and looked at her, the clarity having returned from his Bliss-induced high. He hesitated, and then said, “The ceremony—”

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

“I want you to know,” he plunged on, “it doesn’t matter, but I want you to know that you aren’t… That isn’t all of who you are.” His hands squeezed shoulders, the pressure welcoming and comforting and nauseating all at once. How strange, that kindness sickened her, now. “Wrath.”

Elliot paused, swallowing thickly. “I should go,” she said, because Burke still didn’t know what she’d done to Kian, still didn’t know the full extent of her body count or the way she’d felt when she killed a man. How it felt good, now—satisfying, an instant hit of dopamine centered around control.

“The back window,” Burke said, gesturing. “So the guards don’t wonder.”

“It’s all very exciting,” Elliot added. She tried for lightness, pushing the window up. “Subterfuge.”

“Just try not to say that where anyone can hear you.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

“We’ve nearly collected the last of the supplies,” Joseph said, pacing absently back and forth. “How long do you think, Jacob?”

“A day, at most,” the redhead replied. “They’re working quickly, without all of these interruptions.” Jacob paused, and then turned his gaze at John. His mouth twisted for a moment, and John could _tell_ his older brother was trying not to smile when he continued, “What’s your timeline, John?”

“The same,” John replied tightly.

“A day at most?”

“No, the same as before,” he clarified, even though he knew Jacob was doing it on purpose. “You gave me a timeline and that’s what I’m working with.”

“It’s just, you sounded very confident about your ability to wrangle the deputy,” his eldest brother continued, “and you’ve _always_ been an overachiever.”

Joseph was looking at him expectantly. John knew that they wanted him to say that Elliot had insisted on doing it sooner, that she’d fully acquiesced to staying with him, that he had fully convinced her, down to every molecule of her being, that what they were doing was right and just and undeniably truthful.

But he hadn’t. Their conversation this morning only proved that more to him. _You can’t have both,_ she’d said, like she still thought of herself as a separate entity from him, from his family. But she wasn’t; where else would she find people who would accept her, unconditionally?

Well, mostly unconditionally. There was _one_ condition: believing. The most difficult one for her, he thought.

“I can spend more time with her,” Faith supplied, helpfully. “Maybe she’s tired of being around you boys all the time. You can be...” Her gaze flickered, and she tilted her chin a little, smiling. “A little _heavy-handed._ It’s possible that a lighter touch is necessary to bring the deputy around.”

“First, you should stop calling her that,” John pointed out, and he felt a _little_ more than petulant saying it. It hadn’t escaped his attention that Elliot was naturally inclined to open up to Faith more easily, and he shouldn’t have been surprised, but it did _still_ bother him, sitting right in the back of his mind. Always away but never forgotten. “Continuing to refer to her as “the deputy” is only going to further cement her ties to her past life.”

“Well,” Jacob demurred, “we can’t all call her _baby,_ can we, John?”

“If you have a problem with me enjoying the marital bed,” John bit out, “then I think perhaps you spend some time reflecting _inwardly_ on why that’s such a—”

The door to the chapel creaked as it was pushed open. Swallowing back his words quickly, he turned and glanced over his shoulder to see Elliot, hesitating in the doorway. Boomer lingered just behind her, sat at the bottom of the stairs, ever obedient.

“I can come back,” she said, sounding uncertain.

“Not at all,” Joseph replied, before John could tell her maybe that would be best. “Please, come in.”

She did, letting the door swing shut behind her, and moved tentatively toward the front. He wondered how it felt for her—coming in here, with all of them looking at her, much the same way she had the day that set the events in motion that brought her back to them.

John wondered, too, if Joseph had known this all along; if the things that he heard and saw had shown him that Elliot would always come back here, to them. _Our deputy,_ he’d always said, without fail.

“I want to do it,” Elliot said, as she approached. “Soon. As soon as possible.”

Silence reigned supreme for a moment, before John said, “That’s great, Elliot. We can get started with—”

“But I don’t want to do it here,” she interrupted, bringing John’s mouth to a full stop.

“More fucking demands,” Jacob muttered under his breath.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Joseph said, watching her curiously. The way they had been, he was the closest to Elliot, with a table separating her from John. His fingers itched. “If you’re worried about the safety of it, I am sure John is more than equipped to—”

“This is supposed to be cleansing, isn’t it?” Elliot asked. “Regardless of how you feel, Joey’s body was put on display here. I don’t want this to be the place where I...”

Her voice trailed off, and her gaze darted elsewhere, mouth pressing into a thin line. John said, “I don’t think going somewhere else would be a problem. Where did you have in mind?”

“The ranch,” she replied, sounding relieved. “Feels fitting.”

As John stifled a smile, Joseph said, “Well, we’ll need to clear out the bodies, but I’m sure that can be done.”

“That’s manpower,” Jacob protested.

“You were just talking about how quickly they were getting things done,” John replied. “Weren’t you? Ahead of schedule. Over-achieving, I think.”

Jacob’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click and grind of his molars, and for _once_ , John felt a sweeping thrill of victory. It was coming together, right there, in front of him—in front of his brothers, and Faith. All of the witnessing the fruits of his labor.

“Fine,” Jacob acquiesced, at last. “But it’ll take them a few hours.”

“Perfect.” John smiled, looking at Elliot across the table, Joseph’s figure nearly eclipsing her. “Then Elliot and I will head out as soon as we hear that the bodies have been properly disposed of.”

“There’s one more thing,” Elliot began, looking uncertain, and drawing all eyes back to her again even as Joseph had moved to place his hand on Faith’s shoulder. When they had watched expectantly for long enough, she continued, “I want—everyone there.”

“Everyone?” John asked, the word souring in his mouth.

“Not—of Eden’s Gate. Just… All of you,” she elaborated.

John could _feel_ the surprise, bubbling fresh and unexpected, between his siblings as they exchanged glances.

“Even me?” Jacob asked, and John saw the grin splitting across his face.

“Even you,” Elliot replied, dryly. “Against my better judgment, I’m sure.”

“I’m _touched_ , honey.”

Clearing his throat, John walked around the table briskly, muttering a quick _excuse us_ as he guided Elliot away from the front of the chapel and down the walkway a little.

“You want my family there?” he asked, keeping his voice low as his siblings chatted quietly amongst themselves. Jacob was grinning _wolfishly,_ looking _very_ pleased with himself, which was something John didn’t necessarily like. “Normally, it’s more of a—a _private_ affair, and that’s how I pictured it with you—”

“This is important to me,” Elliot said, watching him. “And _they’re_ important to you. Aren’t they?”

John swallowed. “Well, yes, but…”

“John,” she murmured, her fingers loosely tangled with his, “I’ll stay, after.”

He blinked at her. “You’ll—?”

“Yes.” Her gaze flickered over his, her voice low as she struggled through the words. “I’ll stay here, with you—and your family. After it’s done. I just… Need to close the chapter.”

 _I fucking did it,_ he thought, certain that he was going to grin like a complete maniac if he didn’t keep himself in check. _I fucking got her. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe they doubted me._

“Of course,” he managed out, somehow keeping his voice steady despite the rush of butterflies banging against his rib cage. “Of course, hellcat, anything you want.”

“Okay.” She paused, and then reached up and kissed him—willingly, of her own volition, in front of his siblings, she kissed him, and then sat back on her feet. “In a day, then?”

“In a day,” John promised, their noses brushing. “We’ll really belong to each other.”

Elliot’s lashes fluttered. She looked a little more tired than before, but it was hard to tell this close; and if it bothered her at all—if it was changing her mood—it didn’t show. He felt her smile against his mouth.

“Yes,” she murmured, just the way that he liked. “Completely.”

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Jacob stopped by the bunkhouse with Joseph that evening to let him know they’d dispatched the men to clean out the ranch of any remaining corpses; they’d do it through the night, to better _assist_ Elliot in her revelations. It seemed that the members of Eden’s Gate were just as relieved as the siblings themselves that the deputy was no longer and adversary, but joining them.

Which still left the matter of Cameron Burke.

“I say we kill him,” Jacob announced, glancing over John’s shoulder to ensure Elliot wasn’t there—and never before had John been _more_ grateful for the blonde’s need to go on exorbitantly long walks out of the compound. “Quick and easy.”

“Well,” John said, “that _is_ what I had thought you intended before, yet here we are, with him still on our hands.”

“We are lucky that our brother cares so much as to run our deputy through such trials,” Joseph interceded serenely, before a spat could break out. “And that she passed. With flying colors, I think.”

“That’s a little generous.”

“At any rate, that we’ve moved up this celebration for her is good,” the blonde continued. “I hear that the Family may not all be finished. Jacob mentioned that his scouts saw movement, out close to the Whitetails.”

John frowned. _No good,_ he thought, but then—what about all of those dead couples he and Elliot had seen? Paired, holding hands, flowers blooming from wherever they could fit them? How was it determined which ones would off themselves and which ones stuck around?

“Now that we have all of the supplies we need,” Jacob said, “we don’t have to worry about getting rid of them.” He shrugged. “Let the apocalypse finish them off.”

“Well.” John clapped his hands together. “I’ve quite a day to prepare for tomorrow, I think. And when it’s all done, we’ll be ready to settle in.”

Joseph and Jacob exchanged looks, just for a moment, before Jacob said, “Night, Johnny,” and set off, leaving Joseph alone in front of the doorway to the bunkhouse. When he looked at John, his expression unreadable, something uneasy crawled and settled down at the base of his spine.

“I have something for you,” Joseph said. “Come with me to the chapel?”

Trying not to recognize that dread, lest he give it more legs than it already had, John nodded his head. “Of course. Though, you know you never have to…”

“It’s the least I could do,” his brother interjected lightly, waiting patiently as he closed the door to his temporary base of operations and then fell into step with him to the chapel. The evening was brisk and chilly, and when Joseph said, “And where is our deputy?” John stifled a rueful smile.

“Taking a walk, with Faith,” John replied. “And the dog, of course.”

“Of course.” He saw a smile ticking the corner of his brother’s mouth, small and almost imperceptible. “It’s nice that they get along, don’t you think?”

“It is,” he agreed, “like she was always meant to be with us.”

Joseph paused outside the chapel’s doors, reaching up and giving John’s shoulder a squeeze. “Just like.”

They stepped inside. It was cool and quiet; nobody remained. The radio flickering through channels was the only noise, and they rang empty and static, not a peep out there. He wondered if the remaining members of the Family were just looking for a place to rest, or a way to get out; maybe they didn’t want anything, anymore.

He followed his brother to the front of the chapel. On the table was the map they’d been using, a few scribbled notes in Jacob’s hand-writing, and a manila envelope.

Joseph picked up the envelope and held it out to John. He took it, and then glanced inquisitively up at his brother.

“Is this—?”

“Her file,” Joseph confirmed. “What we gathered on her prior to the Collapse. Also in there are my notes from her confession, as well as what appears to be diary entries, recovered from where Kian had tried to hunt the two of you.”

 _Holy shit,_ John thought, because sitting in his hands was the exact thing that he’d wanted from the beginning. Everything that he wanted to know about Elliot was right there: _waiting_ to be read, devoured, committed to memory. He would know every single part of her, every wretched thing she had ever done, every loss she had ever suffered, every—

“And,” Joseph continued, “your marriage certificate.”

John glanced up at his brother. Suddenly, the envelope felt— _different._ Like an ultimatum. If he learned all of this about Elliot, and she got suspicious because he suddenly knew so much about her, and she asked where he found out and he _told_ her—and he would have to _tell her_ —she’d want to see it and then. And then.

And then.

“I think it’s time, John,” his brother said. “I know that you haven’t told our deputy about this arrangement. She is your _wife,_ after all, before the eyes of this congregation and God.”

“Right,” John murmured, swallowing. “Yeah, of course. I planned on it. After tomorrow. It feels fitting, to tell her then.”

 _Maybe it would be better to tell her in the bunker,_ he thought absently, and then shoved that immediately away. _No, fuck, no, I have to tell her. Tomorrow, after we finish everything._

“Good.” Joseph smiled, and for the first time in a long time he smiled with _teeth,_ and the expression on his brother’s face almost unnerved him. He reached up, and his fingers brushed the nape of John’s neck, tilting him forward so that their foreheads pressed together.

Relief, hot and overwhelming, washed straight through him. They had been so at odds that John thought he might have forgotten what it was like to be in his brother’s good graces, but here he was.

“I am so proud of all that you have done for me, for our family, for Eden’s Gate.” Joseph’s voice rang in the hollow of his bones, vibrating straight through him, spiking in him a delirious rush of pride. “You have done so well, John, despite all that God has done to test you.”

Oh, there it was: everything in him said, _finally, finally, finally, someone sees me,_ and he was reminded of why it was he owed Joseph so much. Because he gave him _this._

“I’m—” John felt the words choke and stutter on the way out of him. It was almost too much—the finish line was in sight. Elliot had said, _you can’t have both,_ but he could. He could, and he was going to, and it was here right in front of him.

Waiting.

“Thank you,” he managed out. “Thank you, Joseph. I only ever wanted to make you proud.”

“I know.” Joseph smiled, hand pressed against the back of John’s head, holding him gently. “I know.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Leaving the chapel, John was cruising on cloud nine; he had everything. _Everything._ Nobody was going to take it from him. No stupid cult, no last-minute hail mary’s from the opposing team—

As he passed by a window into the bunkhouse that had been Elliot’s before Burke had made it his home, John stopped and leaned against the siding of the house, tapping on the window. Burke was sitting at the table, leaned back, eyes closed; when the sound of John’s finger against the glass rattled again, he opened one eye.

John waved, and grinned. “Hi, bud.”

Burke stared at him. He gestured for the Marshal to push his window up, and after a few exasperated gestures, he did—reluctantly.

“Seed,” he said, tiredly. “Particular reason you’re not fuckin’ off?”

“Just wanted to stop by,” John replied slyly. “See how you were holding up. The impending apocalypse must be weighing heavily on you.”

Burke stared at him for a moment. He worked a toothpick between his teeth. His hands and feet were both cuffed, and the guards standing outside of the bunkhouse seemed to be concerned with his tone when he said, “Can’t wait to beat that shit-eating grin off of your face.”

“That’s not very _professional,”_ John drawled. “Won’t that look poorly, in front of all of your little friends?”

“They’ll avert their eyes to let me give you some _extra_ special attention.” Burke lifted his chin, taking the toothpick out of his mouth and spitting out the window, nearly landing on John’s shoes. “Promise.”

 _Impudent,_ John thought. Burke really just couldn’t let him have a moment, could he? “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Marshal,” he said, straightening up from the window and taking a step away. “I like it rough.”

And then he paused, turning on his heel like a swivel and lifted a finger thoughtfully.

“If you want some pointers on what I like,” he added pleasantly, “you can always ask _Elliot_.”

Burke’s eyes narrowed. “Your little brainwashed cultist? I think I’ll pass.” he asked, and John’s smile plummeted, wiped off of his face.

“Watch your fucking mouth,” he hissed. “ _You’re_ the failing party here, Cameron Burke. _You’re_ going to be the one suffering when the End comes for you.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” Burke replied, “better get goin’, shouldn’t you?”

John’s teeth snapped together with a _click,_ pain shooting up through his jaw as his molars ground. Petulant and arrogant, all the way to the very end, wasn’t he? He supposed that made it a little bit better that Jacob was going to off him.

He had everything he wanted, and not even Cameron Burke was going to take that from him.

John flashed a smile, all teeth, and held his arms out. “I suppose I should,” he replied. “Have a nice ceremony tomorrow to prepare. Though, I don’t have to tell you—you’ll be there for it, won’t you? A front row seat and all.”

Even in the dark of the growing evening, he could see Burke’s jaw clench. The Marshal pulled back from the window and slammed it shut, signaling his exit from the conversation; if John had been in a worse mood, he would have stormed right in there and shown Burke exactly what the consequences were for trying to run the show.

But there wasn’t time, because just as he was debating the logistics of doing so, he heard a dog barking in the distance and the sound of familiar voices.

“Hi, John,” Faith sing-songed at him, swinging Elliot’s hand in her own as they approached. “Isn’t it a bit late? I thought you’d be asleep by now.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” John replied with a quick smile, which was not _necessarily_ a lie.

“Too excited,” his sister agreed playfully. 

As they approached, he could see the circles beneath Elliot’s eyes had darkened. She really _wasn’t_ sleeping, was she? Reaching up with his free hand as soon as she was close enough, he brushed some loose strands of hair from her face and guided her close, his fingers tangling into her hair at the base of her skull and his mouth finding her temple. Faith giggled and waved her fingers at Elliot, breezing past him on her way to the chapel.

He asked, “Did you enjoy your walk?”

“It was dark,” Elliot replied, by way of explanation. Boomer sniffed around their feet and then cocked his head, listening while his eyes fixed on the dark treeline. “What’s that?”

“Hm?” John asked, distracted by Boomer’s sudden alertness. “Oh, the envelope?”

“No, John, this stupid fucking Hot Topic belt I’ve seen you wear all the time.” Elliot pulled back to look at him, eyes glimmering with amusement. “Yes, the envelope.”

He opened his mouth to respond, trying to decide if he wanted to be upfront with her about it or not; he was so caught up in his decision that he didn’t even have the time to be offended by her remark about his belt before he said, “We should go back to our house, don’t you think? The company here’s a little sour.”

Elliot’s gaze swept around curiously, and when she spotted Burke through the window, she said, “Ah.”

“You never did tell me how your talk went,” he added, taking her hand and beginning to pull her away. “Good? Bad?”

The blonde watched him for a moment, like he’d said something a little too suspicious. “It really bothers you when you don’t know what exactly is going on, doesn’t it?”

John feigned a pleased smile. “It’s my job to know what’s going on.”

“I thought it was your job to talk incessantly?”

“I am multi-faceted.”

They reached the door to their shared space—and that was a nice little thought, _their space,_ like they had a place that belonged to the two of them—and as Elliot stepped inside, she said, “Burke wanted to know what had happened.”

John closed the door behind them, pausing and looking at her for a moment; he tried to glean any insight he could out of her expression, but he couldn’t. He could only see quiet exhaustion sitting on her face, just there, just within his reach.

“And?” he prompted, when she failed to elaborate. She walked into the bathroom and turned the water on, washing her face; quickly, John opened the envelope and thumbed through the documents until he found what he was looking for. He slid the paper beneath the nightstand beside the bed and shut the envelope, smoothing the metal pins out. _There,_ he thought, _like it was never opened._

“I told him the truth,” Elliot replied from the bathroom, shutting the water off. “About the Family. About—you. And your siblings.”

“Well, he did refer to you as my ‘little brainwashed cultist’, so I imagine that conversation didn’t go well.”

The blonde stepped out of the bathroom, crossing her arms over her chest and watching him for a moment. That was answer enough, he supposed—whatever friendliness had lingered between Elliot and Burke seemed to have been decimated by the reality of their situation.

“What’s in the envelope?”

“It’s your file,” John said, plainly. Elliot’s jaw tensed.

“My file,” she reiterated.

“Yes. All of the things Joseph had on you before, including your confession to him and some papers they found in Kian’s bag of belongings. Back in the woods.”

Her eyes flickered, and she exhaled, long and tired. He could tell that she didn’t like that he had it. She had so desperately tried to keep him from knowing what it was that haunted her, though he had mostly pieced it together by now—an ex-boyfriend gone bad, the resulting fallout, all wadded up into a tiny ball of trauma that sat right in her ribs. All of those times Elliot had tried to cling to those shreds of control—and everything about her had been handed to him in a manila envelope. He imagined that it was quite frustrating.

John offered, “I haven’t looked at it.”

“Why not?”

“I thought,” he began, carefully, “that you might want it. For yourself.”

Elliot looked at him warily. “You’re just going to give it to me?”

“Elliot,” he said as he closed the space between them, “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. I’ll give you anything you want.” John reached up, brushing his fingers against the slope of her neck, feeling the way her pulse jumped at the contact. “Besides, I have _you_. What do I need the file for?”

He wanted it. He wanted to read her file, learn every gritty detail about her, memorize them the same way she’d memorized his scars and tattoos with her fingers; to _know_ her, inside and out, so that there wasn’t a single dark corner of her that he didn’t have completely.

“Throw it away,” Elliot murmured. “I don’t want it. I don’t want it anywhere. Please, just throw it away.”

“If that’s what you really want,” John agreed.

“It is.”

She leaned up and kissed him; her hands cradling his jaw and pulling him there, her mouth soft and compliant against his. He dropped the envelope in favor of getting both of his hands on her, walking her back against the nearest wall and sliding his fingers beneath the hem of her sweater. Elliot’s breath stuttered and hitched prettily, but she pulled back until her mouth was just out of his reach.

Still, though her head was tilted otherwise, her fingers tugged on the front of his shirt and crowded him against her, _close_. If he thought about it too hard—about the way they had begun, hissing and spitting, and how they were _now_ —he’d have thought he was dreaming, how she wanted him in her space now.

“Let’s go,” the blonde said, her voice urgent. “Tonight. To the ranch.”

“You—” John paused, watching her. “You want to go tonight? Why not tomorrow?”

“I don’t want to be here,” she murmured, “in the compound. I want—”

Elliot stopped, then, worrying her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. “I want to have some time,” she continued, “with you, before... Everything. Just us.” Her mouth twisted in what John thought could only be a _playful_ smile. “Like old times.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asked, narrowing his eyes amusedly. “Which times are those? The times where you told me to go fuck myself, or—”

“I think you liked it.”

“Your mouth is one of my favorite things about you, yes.”

“So,” she continued, “can we go tonight?”

John, propped up against the wall with her caged between his arms, studied her for a moment. It wouldn’t be _bad_ to get some time away from the compound that wasn’t some kind of macabre venture out into Fall’s End, haunting her with all of the things she used to have and had once been.

“Sure,” he said finally, “I don’t see why not. Just a little time for us.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Though he had been less than thrilled about the idea of Elliot being outside of the compound, Jacob had confirmed that the ranch was cleaned out of bodies and ready for them. When they swept past Burke in the bunkhouse, watching them through the window, John’s eyes went to Elliot—trying to see if there was anything in her expression, trying to see if there was a blink of affection or recognition.

There wasn’t. Elliot walked past without looking at the U.S. Marshal and swung into the driver’s side of the truck, and when John reached across the console to drop the keys in her hand, her gaze and expression were clear of any cloudiness.

When they got to the ranch, it was quiet; the lights had been left on, and while John knew that the bodies were gone and cleaned out, he still braced himself for impact when they walked in. The bookshelf had been righted again, and the strong smell of cleaning solution lingered in the air, but for the most part, everything was exactly where he’d left it.

It was a shame, then, that soon they’d be slipping underground.

“Bleach,” Elliot said, walking up the stairs after him. “How romantic.”

“It’s your mess they were cleaning,” John replied dryly, flashing her a grin over his shoulder. “In case you forgot.”

“I didn’t.”

He pushed the door open to the master bedroom, taking in a little breath and turning to look at Elliot. She was inspecting the room, and for a second, John almost felt self-conscious—that she was here, now, with him. In _his_ home. Touching his things. Looking at _him._

It was almost unnerving to think about; that some time ago, she had been viciously looking for any way out. But of course, she had come around. She was always going to come around, one way or another. He thought about the way she’d spit _Go fuck yourself, John,_ the way she’d tried her hardest to be as obtuse and unhelpful as possible, how she’d said in the bar _you can’t have both_ but here he was.

Here _she_ was.

There was only one thing left standing in the way, and it was something he had all the power in the world to change if he wanted to.

“What are you thinking about?” the blonde asked, arching a brow at him loftily.

“You,” John said, and it wasn’t a lie. Her lashes fluttered and she almost looked shy, for a moment; when he reached out and tugged her close by the belt loop of her jeans, he added, “What do you think about getting married?”

With her hands steadying herself on his chest, she barked out a laugh. “In general? Or _us_ getting married?”

“Primarily the latter.”

“I—” Elliot blinked, and shook her head. “I don’t... What do you mean, what do I think about us getting married?”

“Do you like the idea?” John prompted. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the slope of her jaw.

“We’ve barely been together,” she murmured. “And—you still piss me off.”

“That’s _amore_.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Elliot groaned, and John grinned, sliding his arms around her to pull her closer still. He hoisted her up into his arms and carried her to the bed; when he’d settled her there, on her back and with her legs looped loosely around his waist, she watched him for a moment. “I don’t know. I’ve never wanted to get married.”

John cocked his head. “Not even once?”

“Not even once.”

“And why not?”

“Why _would_ I?” she retorted. “The only marriage I ever saw was my dad dragging my mama’s credit through the dirt and then fucking off the second he got tired of playing house. Giving up my last name to someone? Letting someone take that away from me?”

John leaned down, pushing her sweater up and pressing his mouth to the curve of her hip cutting up and over her jeans. Her breath stuttered for a moment, and she squirmed when he let his tongue slide along one of her scars.

“I know this is going to sound crazy,” he said, “but marriage isn’t all about giving. It’s about _receiving_ , too.”

He watched the heat crawl into her cheeks, undoing the button of her jeans and sliding them down until they pooled on the floor with a whisper. She _said_ she’d never wanted to get married, but he thought after tomorrow—after she saw how beautiful it would be, to have her sin revealed and in the open—she would change her mind. For him, she would.

Elliot let out a sharp, stuttering breath. “Come here,” she said, tugging on him a little to guide him back up to her. He obliged, and she tangled her fingers into his hair and kissed him; long and patient, lips parting beneath his and her tongue flickering playfully against his mouth. She skimmed her fingers along his chest, down until she could undo his belt and pull it from the loops, discarding it on the floor.

“Miss Honeysett,” John murmured.

“John,” she replied, as her fingers deftly undid his jeans.

“Are you trying to seduce me?”

“You did take my pants off.”

He laughed, the sound sweeping out of him just before Elliot pulled him down into another kiss. She shifted and squirmed against him, pushing and working with her fingers until they were skin on skin. There was a second, a heartbeat of time, where Elliot paused, her gaze flickering over him.

“I want—a home,” she said, her voice quiet, “with you. I don’t have one anymore, and I...”

John dragged his fingers along the exposed skin of her sternum, down and down and down, and she sucked in a sharp little breath the second he found exactly he was looking for.

“You have it,” he replied against her mouth, and a spike of heat sprinted up his spine when he beckoned his fingers against her and she whimpered. “You have it, El, I told you—”

Elliot’s nails dug into his shoulder and she said, “John,” and her voice plunged a little when she did, pitching high and sweet and just the way that he liked it; he mouthed a spot on her neck, sighing against her skin.

“Love those sounds you make,” he murmured. “So good for me.”

“Yes,” Elliot said breathlessly, turning her head so that their noses could brush, “yes, I am, for you—so, please—”

 _So, please,_ she said, so sweetly, wanting and hurting and needy as she clutched him, as her breath hitched in anticipation when John pressed up against her, slow and without urgency.

“Is this what you wanted to come here for?” John rumbled against her mouth, breathing unsteady. “So I could f—fuck you in peace and quiet?”

The blonde moaned her agreement as she kissed him. Her body arched up against his, impatient, and when he _finally_ pressed into her all the way, she let out a sigh, her fingers twisting in his hair.

It was _too_ good; too tight, too hot, and the way Elliot held him close, like she thought she was going to disappear if she didn’t keep her grip on him, made the trickle of heat turn into a wildfire splitting through his body. He groaned, the pace excruciating and delicious as he made sure to take each drag as slow as possible.

“F-Fucking—faster,” Elliot whimpered against his mouth, “John—”

“No,” he ground out, slotting his hips against hers tightly before drawing back out again. “You have to—I want you just like this, hellcat—”

She made a sweet keening noise and rocked her hips up, impatient; each time she did sent another sharp jolt of desire sprinting through him, and he bit out a low swear and gripped her hip with one hand.

“Brat,” he moaned. “Wants everything her way but can’t—f-fucking—behave.”

“Fuck you,” Elliot replied, but there was no real heat in her words; she said it in a broken, stuttering breath. “What if I want you faster? What if I want you to fuck me until you just can’t stand it—”

 _“Stop.”_ John gritted the words out between his teeth; if there was one thing that sent him to his undoing, it was _Elliot_ and her filthy mouth. “God, you—fucking—”

Elliot dragged him in for a kiss, open-mouthed and slick and wanting, and she begged, “John, I want you so badly—I need—”

And her words stuttered for a moment, like she was catching herself before she could say something that she thought might be embarrassing. John’s hand came up and pressed to her jaw, tilting her face back to him so that he could see her; gazing at him through her lashes, flushed and lips kiss-reddened and eyes dreamy and dazed.

“Tell me,” he managed out, through the haze of his own pleasure. “Tell me what you need.”

“You,” Elliot moaned, “I need _you,_ John.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” John ground out. He was powerless to go against her wishes when she was looking at him like that, and saying _I need you,_ and twisting her fingers in his hair and—

And when he snapped into her, she sighed his name like a prayer, like he was holy, and he thought that it would have been a crime not to give her what she wanted. It was almost as good as taking it slow; hearing Elliot whimper _yes yes yes_ into their liplock as he fucked her, rough and a little unforgiving, nearly sent him spiraling.

When he slipped a hand between them, dragging the pad of his thumb across the neediest part of her, he felt her tighten; _closecloseclose_ , it said, and Elliot made a wrecked, desperate sound and kissed him just as she came unraveled, panting his name.

His followed close behind—it hit hard, a strange, empty moment just before the ricocheting pleasure rattled around in his skeleton. John buried his face into Elliot’s neck and moaned, gripping her tight to him, and she arched up a little into him and made him hiss.

“You,” he said breathlessly into her neck, “are getting too comfortable using that filthy mouth of yours to get what you want.”

She laughed, raking her fingers through his hair. “You like it.”

“I’ve said that I do.”

“How much?” Elliot idled, and he felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.

“Wicked thing, aren’t you?” he asked, instead of answering her question. Her lashes fluttered, and when John leaned down and dragged his teeth against her pulse point, she made a soft, sweet sound, squirming in his arms.

“I’m going to _sleep,”_ she announced. Having disentangled themselves and slipped under the covers, she settled back against the pillows and he was reminded, once again, of the dark circles lingering under her eyes. “Feels like I have slept a fucking wink in the compound.”

“Fine,” John agreed, kissing her temple. “You’ll need your rest for tomorrow, anyway.”

It took some time for them to fall asleep; Elliot slept more fitfully than he, and each time she shifted or sighed or rolled it woke him up, too. Eventually, the blonde settled with her face tucked against John’s chest, her fingers absently tracing over the shape of his scar until her breathing slowed and she drifted back off.

Sometime around three in the morning, she stirred, sliding out of bed and making her way to the bathroom. John reached over to the nightstand and picked up his watch to squint at it in the dark. He heard the sink running, and the door to the bathroom was slightly ajar.

“Can’t believe it’s almost the end of November,” he said, out loud and to no one in particular, though Elliot’s head peeked out of the bathroom. She’d wrapped herself in his robe, cinching it tight around her waist.

“It is?” she asked, tiredly. “What’s the date?”

“The twenty-first.”

Elliot stilled for a moment. A strange emotion swept over her face; he thought that it was almost _sadness_. “It’s my birthday tomorrow.”

John set the watch back down on the nightstand. “Well, perfect timing then. I just gave you an incredible birthday present. How old are you turning? And _why_ do you look so terribly distressed?”

“Fuck off,” she muttered when he grinned at her. “Twenty-six, _asshole._ ” And then, like an afterthought: “It’s just that normally by now, I’m—”

The blonde cut herself off, and then shook her head, rubbing her eyes tiredly and walking back into the bathroom to turn the water off.

“Elliot?” he called. “What is it?”

“Just weird,” she replied after a minute, “being... Having a birthday. Here. Like this.”

He settled back against the pillow. “Come back to bed.”

She did as he asked, obliging him as she slid back under the blankets and covers. The robe was still on, and he pulled at the hem of it playfully. Elliot somehow looked _more_ tired than before; and her eyes didn’t quite meet his, like she was somewhere very far away from him.

“Looks good on you,” he murmured. “Blue’s your color.”

Elliot’s attention snapped to him. “Faith said the same thing.”

“Great minds.”

She rolled her eyes, shifting to the other side in bed so that John could tug her back against his chest, burying his face into her neck. When her breathing finally slowed a little, and regulated, John felt himself finally start to relax.

 _I can have both,_ he thought, as he began to drift back off. _I can, and I will._

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When Elliot awoke the next morning, the first thing that she thought was, _I’m late._

It hit her differently in the cold light of day, to think her period was delayed. That’s probably what it was, anyway—a delay. Lots of things could fuck around with the timing of a period, right?

The second thing she thought was, _today’s the day._

Things did seem oddly calm, as they went about their morning; they showered, and John kissed her smelling like expensive soap, and his hands went to the places he loved the most—her hips, her hair, her jaw. It was like they’d fallen into a routine with each other, in just this short period of time; but then, she supposed, that was very natural to have happened, considering that they spent so much time with each other now.

“We should do it downstairs,” Elliot said as John busied himself with some coffee. Boomer had sprinted outside at the first opportunity, taking off into the treeline to burn some of his energy off.

“Downstairs?” he asked, glancing at her. “In the room?”

“Seems fitting.”

He shrugged, sliding a cup of coffee her way and leaning across the counter. “Whatever you want, baby.”

The sound of car doors closing and voices outside stirred her attention away from John’s mouth—a wholly distracting thing—but when she turned to see the Seeds walking through the front door of the ranch, she felt her stomach plummet.

“Brought a plus one,” Jacob announced, shoving Burke forward. “Hope you don’t mind.” He fixed Elliot with his gaze. “Caught him snooping around the chapel. Isn’t that _weird_?”

“I—” Elliot’s brain fuzzed viciously, static biting through all other noise. Burke’s lip was split and he had a nasty black eye forming. _Oh, no,_ she thought, _oh, no, no, no, no. This is so fucking bad._

“Anyway,” he continued, “I couldn’t trust anyone to keep an eye on him, so unfortunately, that is now my job.”

“No,” Elliot said abruptly, drawing all eyes on her. “I’m—I don’t want him here.”

“Elliot,” John murmured.

“Then what do you propose I do with him?” Jacob demanded.

“I don’t know, that isn’t my _fucking job,”_ she snapped. With the siblings all looking at her, Burke took a second and very gently, very resolutely, shook his head no.

Her mind went frantic. _What does that mean?_ _Does that mean stop kicking up a fuss? Does that mean he got to the radio? Or that he didn’t? What the fuck is the plan, now?_

Joseph said, gentle, “I’m afraid we just can’t afford to lose track of him, Elliot.”

She felt fingers brushing hers. John had come around the kitchen island, and now their fingers were interlaced. It _felt_ like she was on some kind of precipice, some great, plunging cliff into a void, and all she could do was stand by hopelessly as everything pushed her towards the edge.

She didn’t want Burke to watch. She didn’t want him to see her let John carve _WRATH_ into her skin, but most of all—most of all, she didn’t want Burke to see that maybe it would feel good, for her, a catharsis.

“Fine,” she managed out after a moment, watching Burke’s eyes flutter shut in what might have been relief. Or suffering. “Fine, whatever.”

“Well,” Joseph murmured, “shall we get started? There’s a full day ahead of us.”

As they moved down the stairs, Elliot swallowed thickly and tried to clear and compose her brain. Everything did feel just a little bit like it was too much. Joseph there, his shoulder brushing hers; Faith and John, chatting like it was nothing to have her sit down in a chair in the middle of the room where she had been kept captive; Jacob, shoving Burke into the room and on his knees.

It was too much. She would just have to _pray_ that Burke had gotten a chance with the radio before Jacob found him.

“We’re going to have to take your shirt off,” John said, moving into her vision, and didn’t sound like he regretted that in the least. A little rush of relief coursed through her when she realized she’d be able to focus on someone familiar—none of Joseph’s prying eyes or Faith’s sweet smiles to unsettle and unseat her. Just her, and John.

“How long is this going to take?” Burke asked, his voice bordering on vicious. Jacob gave him a little jostle.

“Why? You got somewhere to be, friend?”

Elliot barely heard them. Her eyes, her thoughts, were on John; when her shirt was discarded to the side, he skimmed his fingers along her sternum, eyes bright.

“It’s going to look so good,” he murmured, and she knew that _he_ wasn’t paying attention to them, either. He’d seemed disappointed when she asked someone else to be there, but now, it didn’t seem like it mattered at all. “Ready?”

She nodded, feeling a little swoon of adrenaline kick through her body when John left the room and returned with a knife. John looked at her expectantly. The physical acquiescence wasn’t enough.

“Yes,” Elliot said, and John’s eyes fluttered closed just for a moment before he leaned forward and kissed her—hard and open-mouthed, his fingers bruising where they gripped her shoulder.

“Fucking _Christ,”_ Burke ground out, and John pulled away with a wicked grin.

“You and me,” he murmured against her lips, and she nodded.

John sat down. Over his shoulder she could see Burke, sitting on his knees, his face resolutely turned to the side. She turned her gaze away, too, because she didn’t want to see—didn’t want to see Burke sitting there, biting his tongue and trying not to look at her, look at her scars and the one John was going to give her and—

The sting of the first cut barely registered through the fog of her brain. It didn’t quite hit, and then her eyes flickered down and she saw the first stream of red, and it _really_ hit, immediately slicing through the fog of adrenaline to hit sharper, harder, _nastier._

Elliot exhaled a stuttering breath. It felt exactly the same as she remembered; it wasn’t so soft, on her chest like this, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation to her either. Something in her brain tripped at the pain, neurons firing rapidly; _we know you,_ they said, as John meticulously carved the _W_ into her skin, _we know you, pain, we missed you, missed you missed you missed you._

“John,” she said, because there was a burst of panic going off in her brain like fireworks. The two parts of her—the one that self-preserved, and the one that craved this exact sting and bite—wrestled with the reality of her situation: that she was both doing and _not_ doing the thing she had tried to deprogram out of herself.

“So good, hellcat,” John murmured, his eyes fixed on his work as he started on the _R._ He was fixated; he was somewhere far away from her, even as close as he was. “It’s going to look so good on you.”

And behind him, Jacob said, “C’mon, Burke, don’t you want to see what your little deputy _asked_ for?”

“Fuck. You,” Burke bit out.

The sting, the bite; the push and pull. Elliot breathed her way through each excruciating moment, and they _were_ excruciating, these moments, because John was utilizing every second that he had her here, like this.

And that was fine. She needed him to; both for her sake, and for Burke’s. 

Something sounded like thundering up ahead, distant but out of place. It gave her a little jolt of panic. If that _was_ what she thought it was, then—

Elliot saw Jacob’s eyes flicker up to the ceiling, narrowing; she managed out, “Slow down,” just as John paused too, to draw his attention back to her. 

“Slower?” John asked, and the way he said it felt _intimate,_ with his eyes fixed on her and his fingers red with her blood.

“Please,” Elliot breathed. Jacob looked at her for a moment, long and hard, but she didn’t meet his eyes; only looked at John, only waited patiently for him to begin.

After a moment, John said, his voice pitched low, “Anything you want.”

“I’ll be back,” Jacob said. He dropped his hand from Burke’s shoulder; John made a non-committal _uh-huh_ sound, finishing off the unsteady cross of the _T._ She hissed, squirming in her seat at the pain, drawing Jacob’s attention for just a second long before he made his way out of the room.

The _H_ followed next. As soon as he finished, John pulled back to admire his work; there was still a bit of bruising, but most of it was up on her shoulder, not her chest, which was now doused in crimson. Wiping his hands off with a towel, he beamed at her; all teeth and bright eyes.

“What a relief, don’t you think?” Joseph asked, his voice idle and distracted as he glanced up at the ceiling inquisitively. “To have it all out there.”

John flashed a smile at his brother, clearly pleased. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said to Elliot, coming to a stand. “We’ll have to let it heal for a while to see how it’s going to scar, and then we can go back in and—”

Before John could finish his sentence, Elliot heard the sound of car doors slamming outside, and Jacob’s voice, asking something in a demand, and then a volley of responses: it was hard to hear, a floor down, but she thought they were saying _get down, get down_.

“ _What_ is going on?” Joseph asked, his voice verging on something other than cool and calm, and the sound of it filled Elliot with a bright spark of _joy_ : _yes,_ she thought viciously, coming to a stand and feeling around for her shirt while her eyes stayed on the Seeds, _yes, you fucking cockroach, squirm._

“I don’t know,” John said, stepping toward the door. “Stay here.”

He only took two more steps before the sound of Jacob shouting something above them, followed by a gunshot, and then a loud cacophony of footsteps above them.

“Jacob,” Faith breathed, her eyes wide and panicked. “Something’s happened, Father, we have to—”

“Stay,” John barked out, suddenly all business as he was hauling Burke up to his feet. “I think our friend the Marshal would like to take a look first, make sure nothing is _dangerous._ ”

But Burke was grinning when his feet righted themselves on the ground. He sucked his teeth, looked directly at Joseph, and said, “Time’s up, fuckhead.”

Burke’s words send her stomach somersaulting. So he _had_ gotten to the radio. He had, just in time, which meant he’d been caught just after, and now—

Now he was here, and so were all of the Seeds, too.

 _I fucking did it,_ she thought hazily, bracing herself on the chair. _Holy shit. I fucking did it._

The sound of footsteps storming down the stairs made John’s eyes flicker to the doorway, and he let go of Burke, gripping the bloodied towel loosely in his hands.

Her heart was thundering in her chest. It was hard to think through the haze of pain, the stinging and burning of the cuts on her chest, but it was there, if she tried hard enough to look: _hope._

But Joseph wasn’t looking at John. He was looking at _Elliot._

“ _You,”_ the Father hissed, as Elliot pulled the shirt away from her chest, sticky-wet with blood. “ _You_ did this. I know you did, you fucking _locust,_ I knew it the second you stepped foot in my chapel—brought us all here, rounded us up like lambs for the slaughter—”

“What do you mean?” John demanded. “Elliot has been with me since this whole—”

Things moved very quickly, then: through the fog of pain, Elliot heard one, two, three heavy _thuds_ against the door before wood splintered and came crashing down, the instant array of green sights set on them— _all_ of them, her included—and the sound of voices demanding their hands go up.

Elliot watched Joseph, hands at his sides.

“What. Did. You. _Do?”_ Joseph ground out, his voice vicious, the _rage_ splitting across his face almost as delicious as the fear. Faith was crying, and saying something through her tears, as John lifted his hands obediently.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see one of the SWAT members hauling Burke out of the room first. She looked at Joseph and arched a brow at him, lifting her hands obediently when the order was shouted again. 

“Oh, Father,” she sighed, her voice cloying and sweet and just between the two of them, “did God not tell you about _this_ part?”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Things were going poorly.

That is to say, Jacob had a gunshot to the shoulder that was currently being patched while he was in handcuffs—“Can’t have you bleeding out on us, can we?” the medic said, a little _too_ gleefully, until Jacob said something along the lines of _I’m gonna rip your fucking face off_ —and Faith was crying, and Joseph was _seething_ , furiously whispering to himself and held in place by one of the other U.S. Marshals.

Elliot was in cuffs, too, but Burke seemed to be talking furiously with the man who had cuffed her, occasionally interrupted when Elliot would try and draw his attention back to John.

 _This won’t do,_ he thought, as panic pounded through his body, as his heart hammered against his chest. All of his siblings, in handcuffs, and Elliot too; she was, too, but she looked—

_Fine._

She looked fine, and he thought about what she’d said. _You can’t have both,_ and then she’d immediately gone back on that. Of _course_ she had. Of _course,_ because she was wretched and wicked and clever, and she had never truly let go of her hatred for Joseph, but they were _married._ They were married, and the U.S. government was going to know about it before they stuck her on a stand to testify against any of his siblings.

“I need to speak to her,” John said to the officer holding him. “The woman, there. That’s my—”

“You don’t _need_ to do anything,” the man replied sharply, “except shut your mouth and wait patiently for us to load you and the rest of your fucking brood into the van.”

“She’s my _wife,”_ John bit out viciously. “And she’s in _cuffs,_ I would like to _speak with my wife_ —”

“What did you just say?”

It was Elliot’s voice, sharp and clear and splitting through the distance between them. In the chilly Autumn afternoon, John felt the spike of pure adrenaline race through him at her tone, at the way her head snapped to him and she shouldered her way past Burke. The officer had taken her cuffs off.

Burke said, “Rookie,” in warning, but it didn’t matter, John knew; they had never been able to ignore each other, in love or in war.

“I said,” John reiterated, “you’re my wife.”

“What the _fuck_ does that mean?” Elliot demanded.

“That night,” he began urgently, “that night that you were feeling unwell after your walk with Faith, and we talked about leaving—”

Elliot started, her voice hitching, “John, what did you _do_ —”

“—we talked about other things, too,” he plunged on. “I didn’t tell you, Elliot. I didn’t tell you because I wanted it to be the right time. I was going to tell you _today_ , after we were done—I was going to tell you that we talked about it and I asked you if you wanted to marry me, and you told me yes—”

“Stop,” she moaned, agonized. “Stop—fucking—talking—you _didn’t,_ John, you fucking _didn’t lie to me again_ about this thing that you _know_ I hate—”

“And you _signed_ the certificate. It’s back at the compound,” John finished, trying to lean around the officer. “We’re married. You and me, hellcat, just like we say, you and—”

He saw the slap coming before it hit, but it definitely took a few seconds for the pain to actually register in his brain. And oh, then it _hit_ ; Elliot had swung her hand with the same amount of force she might have if she were close-fist punching him, but her palm connected with this side of his face and sent a sharp, red-hot shot of pain blooming and blurring behind his eyes.

Dazed, John blinked and tried to focus his attention again as the officer jostled him out of her reach. He was vaguely aware of Burke moving toward them as Elliot gritted out between her teeth, “How _fucking dare you.”_

“Ell,” John said, and there was blood in his mouth, his lip split from the impact of her hand. “Listen to me—”

Burke, louder and closer: “Elliot.”

“No, _you_ listen to _me,_ you fucking rat!” Elliot’s voice was pitching higher in volume, and higher in frequency and hysteria. “ _What the fuck is wrong with you?!_ I told you, I fucking _told_ you what was going to happen if you lied to me again—you _fucking_ — _I’m going to fucking kill you_ —”

John saw Burke sling an arm around Elliot’s waist just as she lunged again, seething and furious, holding her tight against his chest as she clawed at his arms to get free. His mouth against her hair, he said, “Rookie, take a breath.”

_“You take a fucking breath!”_

He hauled her, all five feet and four inches of her, turning her away from John, like breaking her eyesight with him would save him the trouble of having to cuff her.

“Elliot,” John called, trying to lean past the officer, “I forgive you—”

“ _Fuck! You!”_

“—marriage is _hard work,_ but I _know,”_ he continued, grinning when she finally pulled herself out of Burke’s grip, “that you’re _just_ the woman for the job.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Every line in her expression was pulled tight with _fury_ , and yes—John thought he should have told her sooner, maybe, but if she was going to find out, what better time to find out than in front of the very men who wanted to put her on the stand?

“Don’t you remember what you said last night? You _need_ me,” he tried again, and he could tell the officer holding his shoulders was getting tired of him leaning around all the time. “I love you, Elliot, through sickness and in health, no matter how many—”

“Oh, John,” Elliot breathed out, like she almost couldn’t get a full lungful of air, she was so out of breath. She swayed on her feet exhaustedly, her mouth twisting around the next sentence that came out of her mouth: “I want a fucking divorce.”

The words plunged John straight into a panic, the kind that made it feel like there was a feeding frenzy going on under his skin. This was not how things were supposed to unfold. This was not how it was supposed to go. Elliot was going to be upset, sure—but he had taken great pains to make sure that she knew he was the only thing left for her, after it all. She was supposed to be upset, and then see that it had been for her, it was _always_ for her, for _them._ Everything he’d done, every step he’d taken, every—

 _She’s mine,_ he thought, his face still stinging, dull and hot, from her slap. Burke was saying something to her. _That’s my fucking wife, whether she likes it or not._

No one was going to take her from him. Not Joseph or Jacob, not Cameron Burke, not even _her._ No one was going to put a serial murderer and the wife of a religious group’s lawyer on the stand. He’d make fucking sure of that.

“You think you’re gonna move on from this, El?” he demanded, managing to shoulder around the officer to make eye contact with her. His voice came out tight, sharp—slowly and purposefully careening, but he hated the strike of strange hysteria that wormed its way in there, too. “I watched you slaughter at least a hundred people in the name of “justice”—you _beat_ a man to death with a blunt object, and you _liked_ it—”

“ _Shut the fuck up,_ ” Elliot ground out. She made to move at him, nails digging into her palms, but Burke hooked his arm around her waist and hauled her back again, much like before.

“You think you’re gonna move on and meet some nice little country boy who’s gonna love you even with all that fucking red in your ledger?” _Oh,_ he was careening—all of the control slipping out from between his fingers, like sand. “No _fucking_ way, baby, I’m _it_ for you!”

“Rook,” Burke said, but there was no follow-up which made it worse; Burke said _one word_ —one tiny little pet name—and Elliot’s attention immediately snapped to him.

John had never been made to feel like he was _nothing;_ not like _this._

“Look at me,” he snapped, and Elliot’s eyes turned to him; but he _saw_ the fury split across her face, the absolute indignant rage. “You’re going to spend one day back in polite society and come unglued, Elliot Honeysett, and when you fucking do—you’ll be _begging_ for me to take you back, and I guarantee you I fucking _won’t.”_

“That’s enough,” Burke said, but he was speaking _to_ Elliot, looking at _her_.

“Maybe,” she hissed, pushing at Burke’s arm as blood seeped through the wound on her chest “you should have considered how I would react to you being a pathological liar before you _fucking came inside me, you cunt.”_

Her words sent a strange, uncomfortable sensation sprinting down his spine. She _couldn’t_ be, John thought, alluding to—

But she had been surprised when he told her it was her birthday, like she hadn’t realized what day it was, and had said something like, _normally by now I’m,_ and just hadn’t finished her thought _._

“Okay.” Burke pulled her back a few more steps, his voice strained. Pulled her away from _him._ “We’re taking a walk. You and me, Rookie.”

“What the fuck do you mean?” John called after her, panic rising in his voice. “Elliot? Tell me what you—”

“I _mean_ I’m _late, fuckhead,”_ Elliot spit at him over Burke’s shoulder.

The officer pulled him back towards the truck, dragging him by his arm as Burke took Elliot around the corner of the ranch house. His stomach was lurching nauseatingly, trying to piece it together. Had it been long enough? Of course, it had—it had been over a month, probably, maybe even more because he didn’t know how to keep track of time when he’d been drugged and kidnapped and dragged around.

 _If she is,_ he thought, frantic; _if she does have my child, if she’s_ —

“John,” Joseph said, his voice eerily quiet as he was pushed into a sitting position across from his brother. He seemed to have recovered from his outburst earlier; there was an odd grimness about his expression. “We must remain focused.”

“She—” John blinked rapidly, trying to gather his fraying, desperate thoughts. “Joseph, she might—”

Joseph lifted a finger to his lips to signal silence. Jacob’s breathing was labored but controlled, and Faith’s gentle crying had been snuffed out. She’d only been the damsel for a few minutes before she tried to storm her way out of their grip.

“The task at hand,” Joseph cautioned him. “Then, we will figure out what to do for your son.”

 _My son._ The words echoed hazily in his brain as the van doors slammed shut, eclipsing them.

“How do you know?” John demanded. “You know? You know that she’s—with my—”

“Of course,” his brother replied, still keeping his voice soft.

“God told me.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

“Take a breath.”

“No.”

“Rookie.” Burke’s voice was hard. “Look at me and take breath.”

She couldn’t. Every inch of her body was screaming—desperate for a reprieve, but there was none to be had because she was still nursing her _WRATH_ wound, because she was heaving out great, panicked breaths between ragged cries.

“I can’t,” Elliot moaned, her hands shaking, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”

Burke snagged her hand and pressed it to his neck, just like before, but this time it didn’t do anything; this time, she just felt the spiral hit _harder_ , the overwhelming sensation of touching and _being_ touched sending her brain sprinting in panic.

She yanked her hand out of his grip and clutched her knees to her chest, ignoring the warm seep of blood even against the bandages the medic had patched her with and the sting of the pressure of her bones pressed up against the wound.

Burke stayed, and she noticed. He stayed, and he didn’t have to—he was done, free, could leave and go home—but he stayed sitting there with her, against the side of the Seed ranch, wherein many ways, things for her had began.

So, she cried; she sobbed into her jeans until she thought she was going to be dizzy from gasping for air, and Burke stayed, and waited until her hand fumbled for his blindly before he touched her again. His fingers gripped hers, firm and soothing.

“Is it true?” he asked, when she had stopped her crying, when she had breathed so much there was _too_ much oxygen in her brain. His gaze flickered over her. “That you’re… With that fucker’s…”

“I don’t know,” Elliot replied, exhausted. “I’m—fuck, I’m late, and I didn’t realize until yesterday, because it’s been so fucking—”

Burke passed his free hand over his face. “Jesus Christ.”

“I’m _sorry,”_ and the words came out of her agonized; because she could hear the disappointment in his voice, or what she _thought_ was disappointment. “I thought—I thought he—Burke, I—”

“I know, Rook,” Burke murmured, not unkindly. “Just focus on breathing. I know.”

A few more moments of silence passed between them, filled only with the sound of voices and out and the kick of an engine starting and pulling out from the ranch. After her breathing had evened out again, Burke said, “They’re going to be retrieving Kian’s body.”

Elliot stared at the ground, feeling numb. He didn’t have to say; she knew what that meant. Government officials were going to see what she’d done to Kian. They were going to see it, and see that she was _legally married_ to one of them, and see that she was _carrying the child of one of them,_ and see her _history,_ and all of these things were going to add up.

The picture was not going to be a good one.

“I’ve gotta take you in, Rook,” Burke said quietly. “At the very least, to a therapist.”

She sniffed. _I love you,_ John had said, after he’d lied. Lied, and lied, and lied, and used her, and _lied,_ and if he loved her, he didn’t love her in any way that she understood.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

“Yeah.”

“I know what you’ve been through, and you know I’ll vouch for you. I saw firsthand the kind of—the _shit_ that was going on,” he insisted. “I just—want you to have a realistic picture of what it’s gonna look like, when we get back. They’re gonna autopsy Kian’s body, and—”

She took in a long, suffering breath. “I’m really tired,” Elliot said, her voice breaking a little. “Can we—are we going straight there, or?”

Burke paused, his expression softening, and shook his head. “We’ll hit a motel or two along the way.”

Elliot nodded, closing her eyes and pressing her face back into her knees. She stayed like that for a while; it was hard to tell how much time passed, but eventually, someone came around the corner and said something to Burke, and he tugged her to her feet and walked her to the car.

The sensation of Burke’s hand slipping out of hers sent another burst of panic flooding through her; her body was so _tired_ , so very fucking _tired_ of managing the adrenaline, but the more she tried to calm down the more tired she got.

“I want to stay with you,” she said, feeling hazy and tightening her hand around Burke’s. The Marshal looked at her for a long moment and then nodded.

“Alright, kid,” he murmured, reaching up and squeezing her shoulder. “We’ll stick together.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Time passed differently, after that. Elliot couldn’t have said how long it took them to get to the first motel; it couldn’t have been seconds, or minutes, or _months_ for all that she knew. She was numb when they set her up in a motel room with two beds, she was numb when they checked her scar and redressed it.

“Fucking Christ,” the medic said under his breath when he saw the _WRATH_ wound, still hot and trying its best to scab over. “You poor thing.”

 _It’s not me,_ Elliot thought miserably, opening her mouth; but no words would come. All she could think was, _I asked for this, I’m not the poor thing, please don’t._

“Hey,” Burke barked out, his voice sharp as he took in Elliot’s crumpling expression. “Let’s get it cleaned and let her sleep, buddy.”

The medic nodded, thoroughly scolded, and worked quickly after that. When he’d finished and she had swallowed two Tylenol dutifully, Burke watched her climb under the covers of the bed and said, “I’ve gotta make a call. You okay in here?”

She swallowed thickly. He was looking at her like he was wary of her. The same way Whitehorse had looked at her.

“Yeah,” Elliot murmured. “I’m fine.”

He gave her a tight, tired smile and then stepped out of the motel room, closing the door behind him. Silence lingered there for a little while; Elliot tried to close her eyes and sleep, her fingers brushing through Boomer’s fur as he dozed, but the low, murmuring sound of Burke talking just outside stirred her anxiety, and each time she closed her eyes she just saw John’s face.

John, holding her face and kissing her, _You and me._ John, burying his face into her neck, _I love you._

John, their noses brushing, _We can have a place to belong, Elliot._

John, vicious and unyielding, _I’m **it** for you._

She lurched out of the bed, pushing her way into the bathroom and shutting the door behind her just in time to lean over the toilet and throw up whatever was left in her stomach—which wasn’t much, if the amount of dry-heaving were any indication. Bile burned at the back of her throat, and she thought if she didn’t get a breath of air she was going to fucking die.

Elliot pushed the window open and tried to steady her breathing. Rinsing her mouth out in the sink, she shut the water off and paused, looking at herself in the mirror.

The person that looked back at her was unfamiliar. A stranger. She blinked rapidly, trying to steady herself, but each time she did, she felt less and less familiar with the gaunt, sharp-faced, dark-eyed stranger gazing back at her from the mirror. Some bruises along her neck and shoulders still remained.

 _Who are you?_ She thought, tiredly. _The one that killed all of those peggies? The one that killed Kian? Why don’t I recognize you?_

“... understand that, sir, it’s just—if you saw what was going on...”

Burke’s voice drifted in through the window. He must have been pacing, because the volume of his words drifted and moved, as though he were walking around the corner and then back again.

His footsteps paused. “No, I have not read the autopsy report yet. I didn’t think it pertinent at this time, considering we only just—”

She heard Burke’s words cut abruptly, the sound of his breath leaving him in a sharp exhale, and then he said, “Jesus Christ. No, I didn’t know.”

 _Oh,_ she thought hazily, _oh, he knows. He knows what I did._

Her body moved automatically. Something inside of her kicked— _we’re not done yet,_ it said, ferocious and furious, sinking its teeth into her and operating her body outside of her own executive function. _We’re not fucking done yet._

Elliot pulled her sweater and her shoes on. The late autumn chill drifting through the open window made her mind feel sharp, and clear, and she thought, _somthing has to be done, and I’ll fucking do it._

She stuffed a couple of things that felt essential into a bag—painkillers, bottles of water from the fridge, Burke’s gun he’d left on the nightstand closest to the door—and then waited until she heard his footsteps pacing around the corner again before she ducked out of the window.

When she looked back, Boomer had already leapt through the window after her. His eyes were on her, bright, ready.

And then she ran.

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

_She’s twenty-six, and she’s in a bar._

Or that’s how it would go, anyway, if she was asleep. If she were dreaming, or remembering. But she wasn’t. Elliot was twenty-six, and she was in a bar, and she wasn’t waiting for her best friend to come back with a different drink, and she wasn’t making eyes at a handsome blue-eyed stranger from across the bar. He wouldn’t come over and call her _beautiful,_ and he wouldn’t make her want to be kissed by someone whose face looked a little sharp, and she wouldn’t one day think that maybe she was in love with him.

 _I’m just a girl,_ she thought tiredly, staring at the water glass on the counter in front of her. _This wasn’t supposed to be my life._

But it was. It was her life. Here she was, sitting in a seedy bar halfway to Georgia, with a U.S. Marshal’s gun she’d lifted sitting in her bag. She’d hitch-hiked a ride back into Fall’s End, grabbed what remained of her things—her ID, what little cash she still had on her, a debit card she was too paranoid to use, dog food—and then she’d taken the jeep parked out behind the Keller’s old place and drove.

And drove. And drove. And drove.

Now, she was twenty-six, sitting in a bar, and there is no Joey coming to rescue her, and there is no John to be a monster that she needed rescuing from.

_I’m just a girl. This wasn’t supposed to be my life._

She left the cash for her water on the bar top, hauling herself out of the stool and back out into the parking lot. It was late; the sky was speckled with stars; if she thought hard enough, if she _really_ thought about, Elliot thought maybe, somewhere inside of her, she was going to be okay.

As she climbed into the driver’s seat of the jeep, Elliot turned the key into the ignition and reached into a grocery store bag on the passenger seat, fumbling around for the cigarettes she’d purchased. Her fingers hit hard plastic and she glanced over.

The two little tiny lines on the pregnancy test stared back at her. Her stomach lurched, nausea welling up inside of her, and she tossed the hard plastic back into the bag and left the cigarettes untouched. Boomer, dozing in the back seat, pricked his ears forward and looked at her inquisitively.

She was just a girl. This wasn’t supposed to be her life. But it was—and there was only one place left to go from here.

Home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys. I don't really know where to begin this post, because I am incredibly emotional. It feels so very fitting and special to me that I am bringing in the last chapter of Ancient Names just as 2021 rolls in, and so yes, I AM crying, yes, this WILL be an exceptionally sappy notes section, and yes, this is going to be all about you!
> 
> There are so many people that are in part responsible for this fic actually getting finished and put out where the world can see it. @empirics, whose unending support even when she doesn't even GO here and cheerleading me through writing sprints; @lilwritingraven, who is so sweet, so supportive, so incredible and just an overall gigantic sweetheart; @faithchel, whose tags are incredible and always just give me LIFE, I love that our girls be out here really feral like that; @shallow-gravy, who not only lends me her eyeballs but also lets me complain and whine, send her memes nonstop, and participates in my very elaborate fantasies of Elliot and Diana living out their lives as dog moms; @baeogorath, also an eyeball-lender, also incredibly sweet, ALSO lets me send them memes, and does so good in talking me down from my adrenaline anxiety pre-posting and post-posting, was the first person to welcome me into this fandom and is also just a dear, dear friend. And, of course, @starcrier. As always, this would have never ever ever been possible without you, not even a little bit, not even at all. From the bottom of my heart, to every single one of you, and the people who have left kudos, have left comments: thank you thank you thank you, from the absolute bottom of my heart. Here is ALL my love, just for you!
> 
> The emotional journey of writing this fic has been an incredible one. And a taxing one. Elliot is a character near and dear to my heart for many reasons; I pour so much of my heart into her, so when I hear people say that they love her, and love this journey, and love these things that I've created and written, I mean it when I say that it makes my _whole entire day_. It means so much to me. Thank you.
> 
> In the essence of time, I will not go through all of the feelings that are in my brain right now because there are SO many and I am already crying lol. Please just know you have made the experience of joining a new fandom, and writing in it, so incredible!
> 
> There is going to be an epilogue following this chapter, and then I'm going to take a short break and start in on a sequel fic, tentatively titled Witching Hour. Please come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://proudspires.tumblr.com/) in the meantime; I'm always happy to chat and I promise I am super awkward and shy and so I'd love to have more friends to chat with!


	22. epilogue: goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.” ― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

Everything _hurt._

Or, rather, everything that he could _feel_ hurt—which wasn’t much, or was hard to categorize, considering that opening his eyes felt impossible and thus his brain couldn’t register whether or not all of his limbs were attached or not.

 _“.... ohn. John,_ wake up.”

 _No thanks,_ he thought, tiredly, as pain splintered up his spine and radiated through his skull. _No, I’m really quite good right here where I am._

“John,” and it was Joseph’s voice, muddled with the sound of steady rain. “Wake up.”

John _felt_ the groan, rattling somewhere deep in his chest, as he pushed his eyes open. Then, and _only_ then, did the agony really fucking hit—real, pure body-pain, the kind that sank straight into the marrow of his bones and stayed for a good many days. Struggling, he forced himself into a sitting position, hands flat against cold, wet pavement.

Hands flat. Free. Not cuffed.

“Good,” Joseph said, sounding relieved, “you’re awake.”

When his older brother extended his hand out, John took it; with a surprising amount of strength, Joseph hauled him to his feet, and he finally got a good look around him.

Carnage.

The highway was littered with bodies and blood and the mangled metal of crashed vehicles. He saw dark figures; it was night, late, and his eyes burned, and his body ached, and when the low snarl of one of Jacob’s judges echoed in his ears, he thought, _ah, that’s it, then._

Jacob was there too, with Faith glued to his side. Her palms skinned and her dress torn, and the blood from Jacob’s gunshot wound seeping through dark-crimson. A steady sheet of silver rain had begun to fall, drenching them all; the chill seeped straight into his bones.

And, of course, there was Joseph. Relatively unscathed. Not an open wound in sight.

“How did—” John started, his brain still foggy from pain and, presumably, being unconscious. Joseph gripped his shoulders. There was a kind of look in his eye; fervent, urgent, and John realized that it had been there all along—that his brother had always looked like this, and maybe he had just gotten used to looking into different eyes as of late.

“Our followers have stayed true,” Joseph told him, his voice low. “The Collapse remains on the horizon. Perhaps—”

His brother stopped, as though to gauge himself.

“Perhaps,” he began again, “not as close as I thought. I prayed, John. I prayed for us—for you, and for your child, and even for...” Joseph’s mouth twisted viciously for a moment. “Even for that _Delilah_ of yours.”

 _Elliot,_ he thought, a wave of sickening, burning fury washing over him even when the venom in Joseph’s voice doused him like gasoline. _Liar. Lied to me, lied to my family, lied—_

Wretchedly clever and cruel. More devil than woman. He had always known it, had loved her for it, and he couldn’t be surprised when his hand had come back from the fire burned. _You can’t have both,_ she’d said, and she’d meant it; of course she had. He wouldn’t love her if she wasn’t the kind of woman who meant what she’d said.

“We have much to do,” Joseph plunged on, as headlights turned around the corner of the road. “God is going to speak to me, I know it. I can _feel_ that we have so little time left, John.”

“Okay,” John said, feeling a little dazed, trailing after Joseph when he began to move to one of the nearby trucks idling. “Okay, yes, we’ll—what do we do about—”

He stopped, opening the door to the car automatically for Faith to climb in. Of them all, he thought maybe he was the least fucked up—outwardly, anyway. Inside, his body felt like it had been jumbled around, tossed like a fucking salad at Olive Garden. The ache in his head didn’t dull as the seconds ticked by.

Jacob paused. The redhead’s mouth twisted, like he was biting back the things he wanted to say; John knew it had to be something like _I fucking told you, I told you the situation wasn’t under control, I knew you couldn’t control her,_ but the words didn’t come out.

And in his own mouth, words sat, too: _I’m sorry, I know I fucked up, but I know I can get her back._

Not can. _Would. Would_ get her back, no matter what. By any means necessary.

“John,” Jacob barked out, and he realized that moments had passed—maybe minutes—of him standing in the rain, the door of the truck open. He moved on autopilot, hauling himself into the back seat of the truck and slamming the door shut.

The air inside the truck was humid, fizzing and popping with a strange energy. He could taste it on his tongue, electric; ozone; vibrating in his mouth and in his skeleton. Some of it the storm outside, and some of it the fury in his mouth, so potent it had become tangible.

 _Mine,_ he thought, shifting as pain splintered up his spine and shoulder. _My wife. My baby. She thinks she’s done with us, huh? Not even fucking close._

“We have much to do,” Joseph murmured as the truck pulled a u-turn and began its route back to the compound. “Now, more than ever.” Through the rearview mirror, his gaze met John’s; lingered for a moment, and _only_ a moment. “We will find her, John. Her, and your child.”

John felt his eyes flutter. Exhaustion was already beginning to try and take its toll on him. “She traded us in.”

“Yes,” Joseph replied, and his voice was terse, sharper than normal. “But God is ever merciful. And are we not to liken ourselves in his image, so that we may be as holy?”

He didn’t know if he wanted Elliot back to be holy. He thought maybe he wanted her back because she belonged to him—because they belonged to each other, two wretched creatures, and she owed him, and he would have what was rightfully his. What he was _owed._

“Yes,” John agreed hoarsely. “Just as holy.”

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

_Nothing like dry-heaving over a toilet with your mother standing by._

“You know,” Scarlet said, “us Honeysett women have always taken well to childbearing. You were the most perfect baby, Elliot.”

Her mother was perched on the edge of the sink, a glass of rosé (chilled glass, of course) in her hand, golden curls perfectly pinned and coiffed and the floor-length maxi dress pressed to perfection—in stark contrast to Elliot, gripping the edge of the toilet in her sweats, stomach somersaulting and trying its best to achieve Olympic level gymnastics.

 _You’re not a Honeysett woman,_ she thought exhaustedly. _You’re a fucking Graves woman._ She managed to spit, taking in a long-suffering breath. “You said I was colicky.”

“Well, yes. But I never got _morning sickness_.”

Elliot gritted her teeth, eyes fluttering shut at the hot wave of nausea rolling over her, prickling sickly heat along her spine in warning. “That’s awesome, mama. Good for—” She swallowed. “Good for you. So glad. Really cool.” She exhaled. “Thank goodness it’s five in the afternoon. What’s that, then? Afternoon sickness?”

“Mm.” Her mother sipped at her wine, setting it on the counter with a little _clink_ that somehow managed to sound three thousand times louder in her wretched state. “Yes, we’ve always been excellent vessels for our children.”

“That’s lo- _uuh_ —” She closed her eyes tight. “ _Lovely.”_

Scarlet’s fingers brushed her hair back from her face, cinching it in a ponytail. “Must be the _father_.”

 _You don’t fucking say?_ Elliot wanted to spit, but there was no room. Scarlet Honeysett tolerated a great many things—poor weather on the day of her events, a lukewarm glass to transport her alcohol, the repeated and systematic abandonment of her by her husband—but a _mouthy child_ she did not.

“Educated inference,” is what she said instead. “I think I’m done.”

“Well.” Scarlet looked at her, arching a manicured brow. “Stay here for a while longer, then, just so you don’t go puking on my carpet.”

“Thanks, mama.”

“Mmhm.”

When her mother swept out of the bathroom and took with her the scent of her perfume—normally familiar and comforting, now only nausea-inducing—Elliot closed the door with her foot and leaned back against the wall in the bathroom. Her chest was _burning_ ; the strain of dry-heaving while the skin on her chest was still tight and healing was enough to have probably broken it open if she hadn’t been meticulously taking care of it.

And thank God her mother hadn’t seen _that_ yet.

After a few more minutes of questioning whether or not she was going to actually puke, Elliot pushed herself to her feet and rinsed her mouth out with Listerine. It had not been easy, the last two weeks. Not only was she acclimating to living with her mother again—a thing which she had not done since she was in high school—but she was doing it _pregnant._ Pregnant, and with the child’s father nowhere to be seen.

Her arrival at the ancestral Graves home—a meticulously kept two-story historic building that had not only been in their family for so many years, but was planted on twenty acres of premium real estate in what was otherwise a _small_ town named Weyfield—had been a tumultuous one, to be sure. Though her mother seemed inquisitive about what had occurred, she wasn’t even aware that anything had been happening at all.

Because she hadn’t _been there._

“What do you mean?” Elliot had asked, incredulous.

“Well, I always come down here when the weather is starting to turn,” Scarlet had replied idly, squeezing her lime wedge dry into her glass. “I left In July.”

“The weather is not turning in _July.”_

“Some of us, Elli,” her mother had snipped, “are _sensitive_ to changes in the weather. It’s not my fault you couldn’t feel it. Nor my fault that you didn’t answer my phone calls.”

It provided, at the very least, a bit of leeway when it came to explaining what was going on. Her mother had, of course, been aware of the Seeds in some capacity; but only in the kind of capacity that she thought them a zealous nuisance, and a little slimy—“ _Except_ for the oldest one, he seems like a good man,” she’d said, much to Elliot’s disgust—but nothing more than that.

This meant that Elliot didn’t need to tell her anything she didn’t want to. For now. Until the news broke, if it ever did; it seemed like headlines these days were more preoccupied with what was going on overseas than what was going on within the States’ own borders.

“Here,” Scarlet said, planting a pill bottle in her hand. “Take one of these thirty minutes before you go to bed.”

“What are these?”

“Sleeping pills,” her mother explained.

Elliot’s mouth twisted. “I sleep fine.”

“If you slept at all, I might believe you. I know you, Elli, I birthed you from my own womb, and you’ve _neve_ r been a good sleeper.” The blonde paused. “And I hear you at night, you know, moving around. You and that hound.”

Boomer was fairly good at being stealthy, but perhaps not so much so in a house that was almost exclusively hardwood flooring. She’d have to remember that the next time she decided to go on a walk at three in the morning.

Elliot looked at the label. _Eszopiclone_ , it said. _S. Honeysett._ “I probably shouldn’t take _your_ prescription, mama.” _And why are you giving me sleeping pills you should be taking, anyway?_

“You need to sleep,” Scarlet said firmly. “For you and baby.”

It took a concerted effort to swallow back bile that tried to surge up her throat—for some reason, the knowledge that there was now a _she_ and a _baby,_ that she was both herself and vessel, made her nausea want to kick in. She _hadn’t_ been sleeping, it was true. Not for lack of trying, either. She’d drink some kind of stupid sleepy-time tea, settle herself into the bed, and lay there. And wait.

And wait.

_And wait._

But every time she’d close her eyes, she would be assaulted by images; Joey, jaw snapped and hanging loose from her face. Kian, face a bloody pulp. The blood seeping down her chest from the _WRATH_ scar John had left. And John, of course.

 _He_ was always there, too. His eyes on her, his hands on her, his mouth on her.

_So good, hellcat, it’s gonna look so good on you._

_I’m all yours, just take what you need, I’ll give you anything, anything._

_I’m fucking **it** for you._

_I love you, Elliot._

“... listening to me?”

Elliot blinked. Her eyes burned, stinging with the threat of tears, and she swallowed thickly again. It felt like choking. Things often felt like choking, nowadays—things like breathing, swallowing, sleeping. It all felt too much for her to take, sometimes. Like she was _deranged._

“I’m sorry,” she managed out, her voice barely breaking a whisper, and the second she felt the slip of a tear down her cheek she quickly wiped it away and sniffed. “I’m sorry, mama, I wasn’t.”

Something in her mother’s expression shifted for just a moment. Her eyes swept over Elliot, like maybe she thought she could see what it was that was really ailing her. Scarlet had tried to pry about John; she’d tried to figure out who it was that had left her daughter destitute, like this. What she didn’t know was that Elliot had left _him_ destitute.

 _He deserves it,_ she thought through the heavy wave of exhaustion. _Whatever they do to him, he deserves it._

“Maybe you should take a nap,” her mother suggested after a moment. “Dinner in an hour.”

“I’m going for a walk,” Elliot replied, tucking the bottle into her pocket for later. “Boomer gets crazy if I don’t.”

“Well, can’t have that. Back in an hour, then, bunny.”

She slipped past her mother, snagging the dog leash by the door and calling for the Heeler. He came sprinting down the stairs delightedly, and Elliot opened the door so he could go racing out. He’d certainly gotten less time running than he had prior to this, but he seemed in better spirits, anyway—new smells, friendly people. It was a dog’s dream.

“Don’t forget you have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow,” her mother called after her. “I’m taking you in at nine A.M. sharp.”

“Yes, mama.”

The afternoon had passed by in a blitz, as it was wont to do in late Autumn, and now Elliot found herself with so little golden daylight left; but she thought maybe she liked it best like this, walking with Boomer darting around ahead of her, watching the sky wring the last little rays of light out of the sun before it dipped fully behind the mountains.

_I love you, Elliot._

She stopped walking, closing her eyes for a moment. A low, dull headache had begun to bloom behind her eyes. Lack of sleep, probably. Lack of sleep, and now she had a—

 _A fucking baby,_ she thought, with no absence of despair.

Boomer had doubled back when she stopped moving, and for a moment Elliot felt a vicious sting in her chest. _Cry,_ it said, when the dog nosed her hand with a cold nose. _Cry,_ it said, when she struggled to sit down in the damp, chilly grass, and Boomer could push his face into hers.

She had been alone, before. Alone in all the world. But not anymore.

Boomer tucked his face against her neck and stayed there, panting his hot doggy breath down the collar of her shirt. And as dusk fell, and the first speckling of stars started to make their appearance, Elliot felt herself come undone.

Just a little bit; just for now, while she could bury her face into her dog’s fur and cry, she would come undone.

And when she was finished, she would get up and walk back home. She would sit down and have dinner with her mother, and listen to her complain that while the doctor they were going to see _was_ quite new but supposedly very nice, and she’d take a sleeping pill so that she could hopefully get some peace of mind for one night. In the morning, she would get up and out of bed, and she would keep living. That was all she _could_ do.

For now, though—for a little while, she would let herself grieve. And every time she thought she couldn’t do it anymore—every time she thought she’d reached the absolute bottom—she’d _keep fucking digging._ What would she do with grief, if not lug it?

She would never heal otherwise.

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“Where the fuck is _Weyfield?”_

Jacob’s derisive tone did nothing to help John’s mood. Hunched over a map, the scattered papers of the file he hadn’t thrown away, eyes stinging, he thought he’d felt shittier only once before—long before his reuniting with Joseph. Back before he’d been cleansed.

He’d read every paper three times over. Stared at her photo for hours. Nothing felt any better than it had two weeks ago, when she’d been screaming that she would kill him.

“Some nowhere corner of Georgia,” John muttered, passing a hand over his face. “Her file _says_ she was born in Weyfield, but that can’t be right—that shit is so small. Like, population three hundred, maybe? And her mom’s rich, which means—”

“Probably some kind of old money, then,” Jacob suggested. “Historic home. Lots of farmland surrounding it. Didn’t you say her grandfather was a racing jockey, mom never worked, or something? Gotta have room for horses and big fancy homes to go with those horses.”

 _Oh,_ John thought absently. _Oh, of course. Of course her mother is a trust-fund baby. They would have an ancestral home, wouldn’t they?_

They’d been back at the compound for a few weeks; Joseph had been secluded, alone, ruminating and marinating or whatever else it was he had to do to really _hear God,_ and that meant John had been free to figure out what his plan was. So far, it was pretty bare bones.

Find Elliot and baby. Bring Elliot and baby home.

Joseph did not have a timeline, yet. He didn’t even know what it was that had delayed the Collapse—not quite. He had fervently insisted he be left alone to himself and God, to ensure that there were no interruptions—“ _Interruptions,”_ he’d said, “interfered with it last time, I _won’t_ have it again,”—and so John, Jacob, and Faith had been left to rebuild what they could.

What members of Eden’s Gate remained after the veritable _slaughter_ the Family had brought upon them were run ragged, but the nice thing about having an enemy meant that they were bound together by the same hatred.

“So that’s it, huh?” Jacob asked, breaking him out of his thoughts. “Weyfield, for the little hellcat?”

“That’s it.” John sucked his teeth and came to a stand, grabbing his coat from the back of his chair. “I should head out to Atlanta as soon as possible. I’ll need—”

“That’s a _big_ city,” his eldest brother cautioned.

“That _city_ has resources I’ll need. As much as I’d like to think that I could just track her down and we’ll kiss and make-up, I get the feeling that if I don’t do this the right way, it’ll be dragging her back kicking and screaming.” He paused, his voice tightening. “And I _will_ be getting her back.”

Jacob watched him for a moment. He exhaled out of his mouth before he reached over, planting a hand on John’s shoulder. He half expected his brother to say something like, _just forget it, Johnny,_ or _it’s not worth running the risk of getting recognized,_ but he didn’t.

Instead, he said, “Be careful, keep in touch. And get my nephew back, yeah?”

John swallowed thickly. There was a lot wrapped up in those words; a lot that he had yet to parse through. Blinding, insatiable fury, that he had been tricked and lied to and _deceived,_ but above all else—above all of _that,_ he missed—

 _No,_ he thought, hands shaking and jaw clenching as he pulled his coat on. _No, above all else, Elliot belongs to me, and that’s the beginning and the end of it._

“Don’t know it’s a boy,” he managed out, with all of those whispers rattling incessantly in his head. Jacob smiled.

“Joseph does.”

“I suppose so.”

A moment of silence stretched between them, and for the first time in a long time, John felt closer to _Jacob_ than he did to _Joseph_ —and maybe that was because he hadn’t seen his brother’s face in weeks, or maybe it was because he knew that for some strange reason, Jacob was pleased to have Elliot come back, and Joseph might not be.

Not if he was being honest, anyway.

“Off I go,” John blurted out, worried that he would get stuck in an infinite loop of trying to parse out things that weren’t meant for him to understand. “I’ll call when I get there.”

“Take someone with you?”

“It’ll just slow me down. Besides, I’m trying to _not_ draw attention.” He paused, hesitating at the doorway of the church. “You’ll tell me when he knows, right?”

_When he knows how much time I have?_

Jacob’s expression hardened. He nodded once, short. “I will.”

“Thank you.”

John pushed the door open, stepping out into the night. It was chilly; soon, it’d be snowing, if it didn’t do so that very night, and the compound’s courtyard was bustling with sleepy life. As he climbed into the truck and took a breath to calm the rapid, unsteady beating of his heart, he closed his eyes for just one moment.

 _Just for now,_ he thought tiredly. _I’m going to take a breath just for now, and then—_

And then one more breath, and then another, turning the key in the ignition and shutting the radio off and throwing the car into drive, and then one more breath, until he was breathing all the way to fucking Georgia. He was going to get his wife back.

One way or another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last and final thank you to everyone who has read, kept up, commented, popped in to say hello to me on Tumblr. You really made this an incredible experience. ♡
> 
> The first chapter of Witching Hour, the direct sequel to this, will be dropping tentatively on the 25th of this month. In the meantime, you can catch me [here on tumblr](https://proudspires.tumblr.com/), doing fun little prompts, shitposting, you know! Whatevs! It's a fun time and I'd love to have more friends to chat with. ♡ ♡


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